NOTHING  EL 
MATTERS 


WILLIAM  SAMUEL 


NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

A  NOVEL 


BY 


WILLIAM  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 
Author  of  "Glamourie" 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 
MCMXIV 


COPYRIGHT  1914   BY 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY, 


Printed  in  America 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Prelude  7 

I.  Initiation  9 

II.  Confidences  26 

III.  En  Charette  38 

IV.  The  Book  53 

V.  Alchemy  71 

VI.  Les  Apaches  84 

VII.  A  Vague  Villain  106 

VIII.  Love  120 

IX.  The  Rescue  130 

X.  Beamy  Jimmy  146 

XI.  The  Great  Interrogation        156 

XII.  Vipers'  Bites  171 

XIII.  Petal  by  Petal  185 

XIV.  Between  the  Horns  199 
XV.  La  Brise  du  Reve  215 

XVI.  Frost  Work  223 

XVII.  Strategics  231 

XVIII.  Veracities  246 

XIX.  The  Will  262 

XX.  Burglary  271 

XXI.  Sub  Silentio  290 

Postlude  302 


2136375 


PRELUDE 

^OU have  asked  me,  you  Five  Dear  Ones, 
to  record  against  the  forgetful  years 
(still  far  ahead!)  certain  Little  Adventures, 
violent,  vivid,  yet  whimsic-strange,  that  be- 
fell us  in  Paris  (ah!  the  lost  Boheme!),  col- 
ouring the  same,  at  my  own  proper  peril, 
with  certain  Little  Emotions  that  ached 
delicately  in  mute  (but  inter-gravitating) 
hearts. 

At  my  proper  peril,  forsooth;  that  should 
give  me  pause  .  .  . 

Well,  I  accept  the  peril  (what  is  a  flitting 
blush  more  or  less  against  such  a  tale  as 
ours?)  and  shall  do  your  bidding.  Indeed, 
it  will  be  sweet  to  tune  the  strings  of  memory 
into  full  accord  and  to  beat  out  thereon  such 
music  as  I  may — word-music  (since  that  is 


PRELUDE 

the  craft  I  live  by)  that  shall  clang  of  hap- 
piness to  other  wistful  souls. 

Little  Adventures;  Little  Emotions — is 
there  nothing  more? 

Something  more,  an  it  please  you 

Strategics ! 

You  would  fain,  I  think,  have  the  minut- 
est chronicle  of  that  riddling  word,  though 
you  have  been  too  loving-shy  to  say  so. 

The  time  has  come  when  you  may  hear  all 
the  truth;  and  that  this  truth  shall  have  its 
own  colour  too  (the  rose-flush  of  the  Little 
Emotions  aforesaid),  I  hark  back  to  that 
lost  Boheme  and  show  our  united  life  as  it 
was  in  the  beginning. 


INITIATION 

T  N  the  beginning  I  was  feeling  like  a  moon- 
calf. One  of  the  Little  Ones,  long 
afterwards,  remembered  cheerfully  my  lurid 
ears. 

There  was  cause!  I  was  standing  on  one 
of  the  brown  iron  chairs  of  the  Luxembourg 
Garden  in  Paris,  the  pink  focus  of  concen- 
tric rings  of  gamesome  faces.  The  inner 
ring  was  formed  by  the  four  Little  Ones,  the 
outer  by  a  waggish  crowd  of  uninvited 
Parisians  that  had  gathered  to  see  and  re- 
double my  embarrassment.  For  I  was  feel- 
ing (let  me  underline  the  sensation)  like  a 
very  mooncalf. 

"Moreover,"  continued  Childe  Roland, 
with  a  sweeping  Gallic  gesture  to  me-ward, 


10   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"he  is  very  beautiful!  Observe  those  waves 
of  jetty  hair,  that  olive  skin,  those  flashing 
eyes.  Look  at  the  modeling  of  that  noble 
beak!  See  how  Nature,  with  meticulous 
thumb,  has  moulded  the  spirals  of  that  rosy 
ear!  Admire  the  Cupid-bow  of  the  lip  and 
the  arch  of  the  Olympian  eyebrow.  Is  he 
not  very  beautiful?" 

"He  is  very  beautiful,"  answered  the 
Little  Ones,  in  accents  of  religious  convic- 
tion. 

The  Childe  then  invited  the  opinion  of  the 
Parisians. 

"Is  it  not  that  he  is  enormously  beauti- 
ful?" 

"He  is  enormously  beautiful!"  came  from 
the  outer  rings,  an  appreciation  uttered,  so 
sensitive  is  the  Parisian  soul  to  every  nuance 
of  humor,  ore  rotundo. 

"He  stands  six  feet,"  the  Childe  pro- 
ceeded, "he  is  prodigiously  strong,  an  oars- 
man, swimmer,  athlete,  yet  gentle  as  the 
dodo,  now  extinct  through  being  gentle  over- 


INITIATION  11 

much.  He  garbs  himself  as  one  would  ex- 
pect from  his  vocation  (which  I  shall  touch 
on  presently)  and  I  call  upon  you  to  admire 
and  applaud  those  baggy  velveteens,  those 
flowing  yards  of  cravat,  that  romantic  bar- 
rette." 

Confound  him!  He  himself  had  tricked 
me  out  in  this  absurd  fashion. 

"Is  he  not  very  wonderful?"  asked  the 
Childe. 

"He  is  very  wonderful,"  replied  the  Little 
Ones  in  an  awestruck  whisper. 

"Chouette,  is  it  not?"  he  asked  again. 

I  did  not  then  understand  what  efchou- 
ette"  which  in  the  school  of  Stratford-atte- 
Bowe  means  "owl,"  had  to  do  with  me.  But 
the  French  throng  knew  that  the  word 
symbolized  intensest  and  slangiest  approba- 
tion. 

"He  is  very  chouette"  whispered  the 
throng. 

"And,"  my  expositor  went  on  in  a  tremen- 
dous voice,  "for  one  so  recently  arrived  in 


12   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Paris,  he  is  rather  intelligent.  I  am  sure 
you  all  think  that  he  looks  fairly  in- 
telligent?" 

"He  looks  fairly  intelligent,"  came  the 
guarded  response  of  the  Little  Ones. 

"Is  it  not  that  he  has  the  air  quite  intelli- 
gent?" 

"He  has  the  air  quite  intelligent,"  an- 
swered the  crowd. 

"Moreover,"  said  the  Childe,  sinking  his 
voice  to  an  impressive  bass,  "he  is  a  literary 
chap ;  yea,  even  a  poet.  Honour  him,  all  ye 
that  hear — he  is  a  poet !" 

"He  is  a  poet,"  intoned  the  Little  Ones. 

"It  is  a  great  poet!"  shouted  my  perse- 
cutor. 

"It  is  a  great  poet,"  chanted  the  throng. 

"And  now,  little  brother  and  sisters, 
knowing  something  of  his  qualities,  the  rare 
pulchritude  of  his  person,  the  alpine  altitudes 
of  his  mind,  the — well,  taking  Hugh  Lyd- 
don  just  as  he  stands  there,  blushing  on  the 
Pillar  of  Inspection,  is  he  lowly  enough  to 


INITIATION  13 

share  our  pride,  is  he  great  enough  to  be  a 
Little  One?  Speak!  Is  it  Ay  or  No?" 

"Ay!"  chorused  the  Little  Ones. 

"We  may  accept  him,  is  it  not?" 

"Oui!"  roared  the  Parisians. 

"Then,  Hugh  Lyddon,  descend  from  the 
Pillar  of  Inspection,  and  come  with  me  to 
take  the  final  vow  at  the  Colonne  des 
Baisers." 

The  Childe  put  his  arm  through  mine 
as  I  stepped  down — how  gladly — from  my 
chair;  and  we  wandered  off  together  through 
the  blessed  alleys  of  tilleuls  and  marronniers 
that  are  so  dear  to  the  lovers  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg. I  inhaled  a  mighty  breath,  my  first 
real  breath  of  Paris. 

"I  invented  that  initiation,"  said  the 
Childe,  with  a  chuckle  of  glee;  "how  did  you 
like  it?" 

"It  was  worse  than  the  last  you  worked  on 
me,"  I  answered — he  and  I  were  chums  at 
Yale.  "A  plague  on  your  inventiveness,  and, 
you  little  villain,  on  my  preposterous  garb." 


14   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Yet  observe,  old  fellow,"  he  remarked, 
"now  that  you  are  descended  from  your  de- 
risive height,  no  one  so  much  as  looks  at 
you." 

It  was  true.  I  might,  for  all  the  note 
taken  of  my  existence,  have  been  one  of  the 
Luxembourg's  marble  queens,  one  of  its 
grey  tree-trunks,  an  obstacle  to  be  avoided, 
nothing  more.  Nurses,  irised  with  flowing 
ribbons,  bonnes  with  their  marketings  in 
dangling  nets,  black-bloused  boys  kicking 
an  old  tennis  ball,  brown-legged  girls  trun- 
dling hoops,  students,  artists,  flaneurs  innu- 
merable, passed  me  incuriously ;  some  wholly; 
intent  on  a  petty  fragment  of  the  world  with- 
out, some  soul-wrapt,  I  suppose,  on  the  in- 
finities of  the  world  within.  And  a  vast, 
lonely  peace  clothed  my  soul  like  a  perfume, 
the  peace  that  is  found  only  in  deep  wood- 
lands, on  the  deep  sea — or  in  a  public  park 
in  Paris.  The  New  York  of  my  nativity, 
electric,  dynamic,  ceased  to  flare  and  clank 


INITIATION  15 

in  my  memory ;  and — well,  I  am  not  ashamed 
of  it — tears  came  into  my  eyes. 

"Infant,"  I  said,  giving  my  companion 
one  of  his  many  diminutives.  For  when  Ro- 
land Elliot  came  to  Yale,  rosy,  cherubic  and 
exiguous,  he  was  at  once  baptised  "Childe- 
Roland-to-the-dark-tower-came  Elliot,"  a 
sacrament  that,  owing  to  the  number  of  his 
names  and  the  perfervid  ritualism  of  the 
priests,  became  a  mere  irrigation.  And 
thereafter  "Childe,"  with  or  without  the 
dignifying  "e,"  and  a  score  of  infantile  deriv- 
atives, became  his  for  life. 

"Infant,"  I  said,  wiping  my  eyes,  "1  am 
an  epitheted  fool." 

"Not  at  all!  When  we  are  born,  we  cry, 
says  Little  Will.  And  you  are  just  born; 
therefore,  like  a  logical  and  Shakespearian 
babe,  you  cry.  So  blubber  and  enjoy  your- 
self." 

"It's  that  perfume,  I  think,"  said  I,  seek- 
ing to  analyse  my  absurdity.  "What  is  it, 
Infant?" 


16   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"The  pollen  of  the  tilleul"  he  answered; 
"does  it  tickle  the  convolutions  of  that  subtle 
brain?" 

"Something  does." 

"It  also  makes,  if  the  subtle  brain  conde- 
scends to  such  details,  an  innocuous  and  in- 
sipid tea.  But,  O  trembling  neophyte,  we 
draw  near  to  the  Column  of  the  Kisses. 
Make  strong  your  soul!" 

"Am  I  to  be  kissed?"  I  inquired  anx- 
iously. 

"Fear  not;  no  one  will  kiss  you." 

"Am  I  to  be  pilloried  again?" 

"No;  you  will  take  on  you  the  awful  vow 
and  clasp  the  hands  of  the  Little  Ones.  That 
is  all;  and  here  we  are." 

The  Colonne  des  Baisers!  may  it  stand 
forever,  as  it  stands  in  my  memory,  against 
its  shimmering  background  of  leafage  and 
sunlight,  a  thing  of  tenderness,  motherhood, 
consolation  and  triumph  over  death. 

Near  it  were  gathered  the  Little  Ones,  to 


INITIATION  17 

whom  the  Childe  presented  me  in  the  follow- 
ing terms. 

"Little  One,"  he  intoned,  "known  to  the 
large  ones  of  the  world  without  as  Aloys 
Guex-Beny,  take  the  tiny  working  paw  of 
Hugh  Lyddon  and  pledge  him  with  the 
holy  rune." 

Tall,  grey,  gaunt  and  ascetic,  a  man  who, 
despite  his  name,  bore  the  race-stamp  of 
New  England  in  his  hollow-shaven  cheeks 
and  Emerson-like  nose  and  brow,  took  my 
hand. 

"Little  One,"  said  he,  making  the  high, 
bleak  accents  ring  like  a  benediction,  "Little 
One, 

"I  vow  to  be  true 
To  the  Power  in  you 
And  the  Work  you  do." 

"Repeat  the  vow  to  him,  Hugh  Lyddon," 
commanded  the  Childe. 
I  did  so. 
He  then  introduced  me  by  the  mystic 


18   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

formula  to  Elizabeth  Brown,  who  trilled  not 
unmelodiously  the  R  of  the  northern  line  as 
she  laughingly  repeated  the  rune. 

Then  behold  our  high-priest  red  and  stam- 
mering!— until  with  an  evident  effort  he  re- 
sumed his  extravagant  pose. 

"What,  O  Little  Hugh,  shall  I  tell  you  of 
Betty  Brown?  That  she  comes  to  Paris 
from  'those  continuous  woods  where  r-r-rolls 
the  Or-r-regon  and  hear-r-rs  no  sound  save 
its  own  r-r-rippling  R's,'  as  saith  the  poet? 
That  she  etches  ?  Ay !  she  etches  indeed  in  a 
Bettesque  manner  more  whistling  than 
Whistler,  a  scratch  here,  the  faint  adumbra- 
tion of  a  scratch  there,  all  deliciously  incom- 
prehensible and  incomprehensibly  delicious. 

"But  alas!"  he  continued  in  tones  of 
trembling  emotion,  "Betty  Brown,  I  must 
caution  you,  splashes  daily  out  of  the  enam- 
eled tub  of  holy  Art  into  the  unformulated 
ocean  of  human  existence.  Robed  in  steril- 
ized linen,  checkered  with  Philistine  blue  and 
white,  she  tends  the  sordid  sick  against  whol- 


INITIATION  19 

ly  inesthetic  backgrounds.  This  grieves  the 
Little  Ones ;  for  life,  Hugh  Lyddon,  I  need 
hardly  say  to  you,  exists  for  them  only  as 
patches  of  colour  to  be  peered  at  with  eyes 
half  closed.  Patches  of  colour,  Hugh  Lyd- 
don, shining  through  the  theatric  gauze  of 
the  circumambient  air.  And  whether  you 
use  a  palette-knife,  Hugh  Lyddon,  or  a 
brush,  or  a  burin,  or  a  pen,  those  air-veiled 
patches  of  colour  and  the  cosmic  meaning  of 
those  patches  are  all  your  business  as  a  loyal 
Little  One.  Yet,  woe  is  me!  This  Betty 
Brown,  with  whose  soul  we  have  laboured  in 
vain,  persists  in  painting  with  the  heretical 
brush  of  good  deeds  on  the  vibrating  canvas 
of  humanity.  Betty  Brown  is  a  grievous 
trouble  to  the  Little  Ones." 

Thus  the  Childe,  beaming  with  transpa- 
rent affection  on  the  unconcerned  object  of 
his  tirade. 

"Infant,"  said  she,  as  he  paused,  "do  you 
want  your  ears  boxed?" 

"Sacrilege !"  he  cried,  "Sacrilege !    Would 


20   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

you  lay  an  impious  hand  on  your  hierophant 
in  the  very  exercise  of  his  sacred  functions?" 

"I  would,"  remarked  Betty,  serenely. 

"Then,"  he  answered  majestically,  "lest  I 
be  tempted  to  hurl  on  your  bonny  brown 
head — I  mean  on  your  unregenerate  soul — • 
the  fulminations  of  my  maranatha,  I  pro- 
ceed, even  I,  to  pledge  my  faith  to  our 


novice." 


"I,"  he  said,  turning  to  me,  "am  the  Paint- 
er and  the  last  great  word  of  art.  I  pause., 
that  the  import  of  this  pronouncement  may; 
trickle  into  the  lyric  brain." 

"You  are  indeed  the  Painter,"  I  assented. 

He  then  took  my  hand  and,  with  much 
latent  feeling  quivering  in  his  voice,  rolled 
forth  the  rune.  Dear  old  boy !  we  needed  no 
words  to  bind  our  faith  faster  together. 

"Under  our  awful  code,"  he  went  on, 
"none  may  seal  faith  with  our  Mystery  till 
he  has  sealed  faith  with  me,  the  hierophant 
and  hierarch.  Repeat  the  rune,  Hugh  Lyd- 
don,  once  to  the  Air — " 


INITIATION  21 

"Once  to  the  ghostly  air,"  repeated  Aloys 
Guex-Beny  softly,  removing  his  hat. 

"Once  to  the  Book—" 

"Once  to  the  Book  of  the  Frost,"  said 
Aloys. 

"And  once  to  our  unseen  playmates,  the 
immortal  Little  Ones." 

Amid  the  silence  of  my  comrades,  I  ut- 
tered thrice  the  rune,  and  at  each  pause  they 
cried  "Amen!" 

"And  now,"  said  the  Childe,  "let  the  Mis- 
tress of  Music,  let  the  Hoar-Frost,  let 
Pruina  Guex-Beny,  the  Priestess  of  the 
Book,  seal  faith  with  the  Little  One  and  all 
will  be  accomplished,  even  unto  the  utter- 
most." 

The  Hoar-Frost!  It  was  no  wintry 
shape,  cold-crisped  and  glittering,  that  came 
to  meet  me;  it  was  no  glacial  hand  that  mine 
enclosed.  I  saw,  like  something  in  a  dream, 
the  mellow  sunshine  of  Paris  falling  on  an 
earnest  face,  all  sunshine  too.  I  heard,  as 
one  follows  the  sound  of  one  sweet  instru- 


22   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

ment  through  the  tangled  perplexities  of  a 
symphony,  a  wood-thrush  voice  thrilling 
through  the  fluttering  laughter  of  children, 
the  music  of  the  dear  French  tongue  and  the 
twittering  of  the  Luxembourg  sparrows. 

"I  vow  to  be  true,"  said  the  voice;  but  ah! 
what  asons  of  time  between  each  singing 
word!  It  is  not  only  to  the  drowning  man 
that  the  past  envisages  itself.  I  think  that 
whenever  retrospect  is  threatened  with  ex- 
tinction, it  awakens  suddenly  from  its  placid 
half --consciousness  in  the  memory,  makes  its 
scattered  legions  one,  and  rushes  united  like 
a  single  frightened,  savage  thing  to  battle 
for  its  life. 

"To  the  power  in  you." — The  power  in 
me? — What  power?  The  dead  years  storm 
by  and  give  no  comforting  answer. — I  feel 
myself  drop  senseless  again  in  that  old  Yale 
shell  as  she  arrows  across  the  winning  line. — 
I  sprint  round  Harvard's  end  once  more 
with  the  ball — ah!  the  wild  play! — clutched 
hard. — I  feel  the  water  slide  along  my  body 


INITIATION  23 

as  my  rolling  stroke,  the  "Lyddon  crawl," 
shoots  me  first  through  the  race. — I  see 
reams  of  scrawled  paper,  written,  rewritten, 
scratched,  interlined,  blotted;  essays,  stories, 
poems,  and  visions  of  fame  rising  out  of 
them. — I  hear  old  Parr  say:  "Adhere  to 
literature,  Mr.  Lyddon — eh,  what?  You 
will,  I  venture  to  predict — though  my  pro- 
phetic vein  is  oversanguine  at  times — eh, 
what? — You  may  arrive,  Mr.  Lyddon — eh, 
what?"  And  it  all  seems  so  futile,  so  un- 
utterably banal. 

"The  power  in  me,"  forsooth!  It  is  all  in 
the  past,  that  power.  And  what  is  it  doing, 
this  past  with  its  flamboyant  pictures?  It  is 
quietly  melting  away  in  the  little  hand  that 
lies  in  mine ;  vanishing,  like  the  brute  matter 
of  Lucretius,  "atom  and  void,  atom  and  void, 
into  the  unseen  forever." 

And  as  I  watch  the  hand — I  dare  not  raise 
my  eyes  higher — the  ghost  of  that  unfruitful 
past  seems  to  rise  and  float  away,  a  thin  wisp 
of  vapour. 


24   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Bending  tranced  over  the  hand,  that 
gloveless,  ringless,  confiding  hand,  I  must 
have  looked  prodigiously  foolish.  N'im- 
porte! — the  humblest  can  pay  at  least  this 
tribute  to  truth:  to  look  like  a  happy  fool 
when  he  is  foolishly  happy ! 

"And  the  work  you  do."  Work! — ah,  I 
shall  surely  work  and  win — win  what?  I 
raise  my  eyes  timidly  and  meet  for  the  first 
time  the  light  of  hers,  those  brown-gentle- 
nesses, gold-flecked  and  peace-giving,  the 
eyes  of  Pruina. 

Then  I  knew  why  the  past  had  clashed  so 
plangent  through  my  memory.  For  there 
was  no  past  any  more  forever;  and  life  had 
become  a  future,  all  sunning  gold  and  be- 
friending brown  and — is  it  I  that  speak, 
speak  for  geologic  ages? 

"I  vow  to  be  true 
To  the  Power  in  you 
And  the  Work  you  do." 


INITIATION  25 

"You  are  now  a  Little  One,"  intoned  the 
Childe;  and — some  centuries  later — I  re- 
leased Pruina's  hand. 


II 


CONFIDENCES 

,"  I  murmured,  keeping  my 
eyes  fixed  on  the  marble  lovers  of 
the  Fountain  of  the  Medicis — 

Paris,  once  she  has  bewitched  you,  lays 
your  heart  bare.  She  forces  avowals.  The 
great  mother-confessor,  she  bids  you  unveil 
your  soul  to  itself;  and  her  absolutions, 
uttered  with  Gallic  prodigality  of  gesture, 
bring  comfort.  She  is  so  ancient-wise,  that 
Paris,  and  so  foolish-young,  that  we  are  sure 
she  understands.  And  she  bids  you  tell  the 
secret,  so  unveiled,  to  your  oldest  friend,  or 
in  his  default  to  the  next  child  of  Paris  you 
meet,  to  a  stray  dog,  a  flower,  a  tree — or  to 
anything.  And  if  the  secret  chances  to  be 
love! — . 

26 


CONFIDENCES  27 

"Childe,"  said  I;  and  the  sunlight,  sifted 
and  shaken  by  the  green  vibrations  overhead, 
struck  up  from  the  water  and  fluttered  warm 
on  the  bodies  of  those  marble  lovers. 

Paris ! — the  Franks — and  "frankness," 
which  is  to  be  like  unto  a  Frank  in  Arcadian 
candour.  Therein,  surely,  is  the  key  to  the 
art  of  this  race,  to  its  passionate  self-expres- 
sion. The  key  to  its  literature,  too,  with  its 
ingenuous,  ingratiating  egotism.  Just  the 
naked  heart  talking,  both.  And  when  one 
becomes  Parisian,  lives  in  the  focal  point 
where  the  refracted  rays  of  that  racial  Frank 
frankness  meet  and  burn — why,  one  melts, 
willy-nilly.  The  old  Puritan  walls  round  the 
emotions  crumble;  the  thick  scholastic  dams 
round  the  fluid  mind  wash  away;  rheumatic 
reserves  (for  our  Teutonic  reserves  are  just 
gout  of  the  soul)  become  flexible  and — why, 
one  talks,  willy-nilly. 

"Infant,"  said  I. — Ovid  tells  the  story  of 
those  marble  lovers  and  an  egregiously  dull 
story  it  is,  to  my  thinking.  Acis  and  Galatea 


28   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

they  are,  cuddling  at  the  foot  of  a  crag,  while 
Polyphemus,  huge,  bronze,  glowering, 
watches  from  above — 

A  dull  story;  but  Paris  has  drawn  it  forth 
from  its  antiquity,  has  humanised  it,  has 
spiritualised  it,  has  told  it  over  again  so 
tenderly,  so  nobly,  in  words  of  marble,  in 
rhythms  of  flowing  line,  in  suggestions  that 
reach  back  to  some  infinite  source  of  loveli- 
ness and  love,  that  the  thing  becomes  Paris- 
ian. And  the  lovers,  so  transfigured,  take 
the  whole  universe  into  their  confidence  with 
such  an  abandon  of  soul  that  one  fancies  it 
is  not  sunlight  flickering  its  way  through 
dancing  leaves,  but  the  light  of  some  mystic 
cosmic  emotion  breaking  through  the  happy 
souls  of  living  lovers  that  plays  so  raptur- 
ously over  the  quivering  marble — 

"Infant,"  I  repeated;  and  this  time  he 
awakened  from  his  day-dream  and  turned  on 
me  the  eye  of  attention. 

"Childe,"  I  said,  "I  have  something  mo- 
mentous to  tell  you." 


CONFIDENCES  29 

"Tell !"  he  answered  gaily,  "this  is  the  mo- 
ment for  the  momentous." 

"Childe,"  I  continued ;  "I  am  in  love." 

To  my  surprise  he  became  very  pale. 

"There!"  he  exclaimed,  all  the  merriment 
gone  from  his  voice,  "I  knew  that  would  be 
the  way!" 

"But—" 

"Of  course  I'm  only  a  round-faced,  un- 
romantic,  good-natured  little  buffoon  and  all 
the  girls  like  to  have  me  about;  but  as  for 
thinking  of  me  as  a  lover  or  a  husband,  why 
I  might  as  well  be  the  Polichinelle  in  that 
show" — he  waved  a  scornful  hand  in  the  di- 
rection of  the  Guignol,  whose  drum  was 
thumping  among  the  distant  trees — "might 
just  as  well  be  a  wooden  Punch  and  have 
done  with  it." 

"But,  Infant—" 

"And  here  you  come,  big  and  poetic  and 
handsome,  and  fall  in  love  with  the  only  girl 
I  ever — " 

"But,  Childe— " 


30   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Why  did  you  choose  her?  Why  aren't 
you  a  misogamist  or  a  misogynist  or  any  sort 
of  an  'ist  that  doesn't  want  to  marry?  Why 
didn't  you  become  a  Catholic  priest?  Why 
didn't  you  fall  in  love  before  you  left  home? 
Why  did  you  choose  this  time  and  this  place 
and  That  Girl  for  your  outrageous  and  dis- 
loyal passion?  Why — " 

"Childe!" 

"Why  didn't  you  choose  Pruina?  Why 
out  of  all  the  five  hundred  million  women  on 
the  earth  must  you  select  Betty?  Why — " 

I  seized  my  foolish  little  friend  and  put 
my  hand  over  his  mouth. 

"I  have  chosen  Pruina,"  I  shouted  and  in- 
cautiously removed  my  hand. 

"Why,"  he  continued,  showing  no  sign  of 
having  understood  my  announcement,  "why 
Betty?" 

I  corked  him  up  again. 

"Infant,"  I  roared,  "I  am  not  in  love  with 
your  Betty!  Do  you  understand?  I  am  in 
love  with  Pruina." 


CONFIDENCES  31 

This  time  I  did  not  remove  the  cork  till 
the  vintage  of  comprehension  had  ripened. 

"Do  you  really  mean  that  you  are  in  love 
with  Pruina  Guex-Beny  and  not  with  Betty 
Brown?" 

"I  do." 

He  exhaled  his  emotion,  thereby  aiding 
the  bottle  metaphor,  in  a  fizzing  sigh  of  con- 
tent. 

"I  cannot  understand  you,"  said  he. 

"Cannot  understand  what?" 

"How,  having  eyes  and  ears  and  a  mind 
and  a  heart,  you  prefer  Prue  to  Betty.  Why, 
man,  you  are  the  victim  of  juvenile  demen- 
tia—" 

"You  needn't  object." 

"But  I  do  object!  I  blush  with  shame  at 
your  thrice  sodden  imbecility.  Just  look  at 
those  girls!" 

"De  gustibus  non  est  disputandum"  said 
I. 

"This  is  no  question  de  gustibus,"  he  re- 
torted, "it's  a  question  de  girl-ibus.  Why, 


32   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

with  Betty  at  your  side  you  would  go,  you 
and  your  poetry,  straight  to  the  heart  of  life. 
You  would  be  a  Tennyson,  a  Keats." 

"But,  old  man,"  I  suggested,  "where 
would  you  be  while  I  was  taking  that  person- 
ally conducted  tour  with  Miss  Elizabeth 
Brown?" 

"I'd  be  going  to  the  canines,"  he  said  dole- 
fully; "but  it  wouldn't  matter." 

"It  would  matter  enormously,"  I  pro- 
tested. 

"No,"  he  insisted;  "for  if  you  don't  win 
her  some  other  fellow  will ;  and  I'd  rather  be 
hurt  by  you  than  by  some  chap  I've  never 
seen." 

"Childe,  you  are  an  arrant  ass." 

"Yes;  that's  just  it;  and  no  woman  with 
any  sense  of  humour — Betty  has  a  delicious 
sense  of  humour — wants  to  be  Mrs.  Arrant 
Ass." 

"The  interrogation  point  is  shaped  like  a 
sickle,"  I  remarked. 

"What  of  it?" 


CONFIDENCES  33 

"In  proper  hands  it  reaps  the  harvest  of 
truth.  Have  you  ever  asked  her?" 

"Never!  and  I  never  shall.  In  the  first 
place,  I'm  too  poor.  My  book-plates  and 
illustrations  and  all  that  rubbish  just  bring 
in  enough  to  feed  and  clothe  me.  In  the 
second  place,  I'm  Mr.  Punch;  just  a  blither- 
ing, blundering  joke-monger." 

"Infant,"  I  said  severely,  "you  have 
changed.  At  Yale  you  were  our  Democritus, 
our  laughing  philosopher.  You  evolved  a 
gospel  of  merriment.  For  four  years  you 
cheered  the  dear  old  class;  and  under  your 
maddest  jests  we  always  found  something 
wise  and  good  and  human.  Even  yesterday, 
in  that  absurd  initiation,  I  heard  here  and 
there  an  echo  of  the  old  Roland  Elliot.  But 
today  you  simply  drivel.  What  the  devil  has 
happened  to  you?" 

"Betty,"  he  answered,  plaintively,  "just 
Betty." 

"PooroldChilde,"saidI. 

"Poor  old  Childe,"  sighed  he. 


34,   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

And  there  was  a  long  silence.  The  sun 
had  found  a  rift  in  the  leafage  and  now 
shone  unshadowed  on  the  forms  of  Acis  and 
Galatea.  We  looked  with  eyes  of  deep  self- 
pity  on  the  divine  intimacy  of  these  amorous 
myths. 

"In  view  of  your  dolorous  state,"  I  said, 
whereat  he  sighed  again,  "considering  your 
love-deleted  past,  your  sombre  present  and 
your  hopeless  future,  I  have  discovered  that 
I  am  not  in  love." 

"But,  my  poor  old  Hugh" — he  spoke 
as  from  heights  of  pitying  omniscience — 
"nothing  else  matters." 

"You  are  a  one-sided  mope;  and  several 
things  matter.  I  shall  not  fall  in  love,  even 
with  Pruina  Guex-Beny.  Apropos.,  would 
there  be  grounds  for  hope  if  I  did?" 

"Hope  is  symbolised  by  an  anchor,"  he  an- 
swered enigmatically. 

"Expound,  Orlando." 

"And  an  anchor,  put  to  its  raison  d'etre, 
indicates  that  the  status  quo  is  maintained." 


CONFIDENCES  35 

"Unless  the  anchor  drags." 

"Just  so.  Now,  if  the  status  quo  is  main- 
tained I  fear  that  the  ocean  of  your  true 
love— " 

"It  is  not  my  true  love;  the  case  is  hypo- 
thetical." 

"All  right.  I  fear,  then,  that  the  ocean  of 
hymeneal  hypothesis  will  be  non-navigable." 

4  *  Why  ?    Do  be  less  metaphorical . ' ' 

"I  will  be  literal.  The  hypothetical  father- 
in-law,  Aloys  Guex-Beny,  is  a  great  man, 
an  unknown  man,  to  be  sure,  but  a  great 
one." 

"That  in  itself  is  no  obstacle." 

"He  is  also  a  cam." 

"Explain,  please." 

"A  cam,  my  poetic  friend,  is  a  wheel  with 
a  hump  on  its  periphery.  It  is  used  in  many 
machines  and  is  no  doubt  also  useful  in  the 
great  engine  of  life.  The  hump  on  the  cam 
comes  round  once  every  revolution  and  opens 
a  valve,  or  trips  a  trigger,  or  closes  a  cir- 
cuit, or — " 


36   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Get  to  the  point,"  I  pleaded. 

—or  something  of  the  sort.  And  the 
hump  on  the  human  cam  does  likewise.  It  is 
the  law  of  the  machine.  It  is  eternally  there. 
It  is  always  true  to  its  prearranged  eccen- 
tricity. It  is  destiny,  Hugh;  it  is  destiny. 
Well,  Aloys  Guex-Beny,  whom  I  revere  and 
love,  is  a  splendidly  lubricated  cam  with  an 
exceeding  large  hump." 

"Tell  me  about  it,"  I  requested. 

"No;  the  subject  is  rather  too  metaphysi- 
cal for  Mr.  Punch." 

"But  how  does  it  affect  (this  is  all  hypo- 
thetical) Little  Pruina?" 

"Why,  I  rather  think,  my  dear  boy — I  am 
not  sure,  of  course,  but  I  rather  think  from 
little  hints  that  I  have  gathered  during  the 
past  two  years  in  Paris — that  Pruina  is 
vowed  to  celibacy." 

"Good  Lord,"  I  exclaimed,  adding,  on 
noting  his  quizzical  smile,  " — an  hypothetical 
ejaculation." 

"Yes;  as  a  sort  of  priestess,  or  pythoness, 


CONFIDENCES  37 

or  vestal- virgin  of  her  father's  cult.  In  fact, 
old  man,  I  think  that  you  are  wise  in 
your  determination  not  to  fall  in  love  with 
Pruina." 

The  sun  had  gone  from  the  marble  lovers, 
leaving  them  cold  and  grey  above  the  mirror- 
ing water. 

I  heaved  a  profound  sigh. 

"Is  wisdom  so  woebegone?"  he  asked. 

"Actually,  I  am  1' Allegro ;  by  hypothesis, 
il  Penseroso.  I  am  glad  to  have  sailed  clear 
of  the  doldrums  in  which  you  are  becalmed; 
but  the  ocean  looks  rather  lonely.  A  man 
must  be  in  love  with  someone." 

"Poor  old  Hugh,"  he  said. 

"Poor  old  Infant,"  said  I. 


Ill 

EN   CHARETTE 

JDOUQUINERl—how  precious  a  thing  is 
the  right  word!  And  how  desirable  a 
thing  when  it  symbols  an  act  at  once  graci- 
ous, enticing  and  touched  with  grey  romance. 

Now  bouquiner  means  to  hunt  for  old 
books.  That  is  all.  But  the  very  thought 
of  the  word  raises  a  ghost  in  the  memory,  a 
vision  of  those  mile-long,  stone-paved,  pop- 
lar-shaded hunting  grounds  that  line  the 
quais  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine. 

An  old  story?  Of  course! — and  a  musty, 
dog-eared,  broken-backed,  much  bethumbed 
old  story  at  that.  But  no  matter — the  glam- 
our clothes  it  still ;  no  time,  no  reiteration,  no 
vulgarising,  can  ever  make  it  trite;  and  as 
long  as  the  quais  guide  the  old  Seine,  as 

38 


EN    CHARETTE  39 

long  as  books  are  books,  so  long  will  the 
hunters  bouquiner  and  be  beatified  by  the 
hunting. 

I  regret  that  my  publishers,  in  all  other 
respects  men  that  savour  the  finer  essences  of 
literature,  should  have  limited  my  medium. 
Ah,  the  idols  of  the  market ! — I  am  bound  by 
adamantine  vows  to  refrain  from  rhyme.  It 
is  a  pity!  Song  is  man's  natural  speech,  his 
still  most  potent  engine;  the  infant  babbles 
ma-ma  and  pa-pa;  and  the  levies  march  to 
Valmy  roaring  the  Marseillaise.  And  then 
song  glides  so  easily  through  the  hereditary 
limitations  (architectural  limitations  mostly) 
of  the  human  soul,  glides  as  the  Seine  glides 
between  its  quais  and  houses  and  palaces, 
glides  dimpling  and  swirling,  catching  up 
fragments  of  the  universal  sunshine  and 
tossing  them,  like  seeds  of  light,  into  the  mis- 
governed city  of  thought. 

It  is  indeed  a  pity! — for  I  have  written  a 
pretty  verse  about  the  book-hunters,  the 
bouquineurs.  I  have  put  the  dear  quais  in 


40   XOTHIXG  ELSE  MATTERS 

it,  just  as  they  are,  the  square,  grey  stone 
parapets  with  the  boxes  of  books  above, 
boxes  of  all  colours  with  a  prismatic  jumble 
of  books  within.  And  the  bouquinistes,  the 
men  and  women  that  sell  the  books,  they  are 
there  too;  the  crippled  man  with  his  fat 
dog,  the  fat  woman  with  her  crippled  dog 
("ecrase  three  times  by  auto-taxis,  m'sieur, 
and  not  dead  yet!")  and  many  others,  dog- 
ged and  dogless.  And  the  books  are  there, 
the  blessed  things,  almost  too  precious  to  be 
named  in  prose. 

What  else? — why,  the  wet  wood  pavement 
is  there  and  the  smell  of  it,  the  vaporous, 
putrescent  smell  that  is  like  unto  no  other 
for  twangling  the  wires  of  a  Parisian  heart. 
You  know,  if  country-bred,  the  damp  odours 
of  spring  woods,  odours  of  fecundity  and 
promise,  when  you  have  tramped  into  their 
depths  to  greet  the  purple  spathe  of  the 
skunk  cabbage  and  the  green  spikes  of  the 
hellebore;  and  you  know  how  love,  primal 
and  elemental,  stirs  your  being.  You  know, 


•EN   CHARETTE  41 

if  reared  'long-shore,  the  titillating,  salt  de- 
cay that  steams  from  the  oozing  flats  at  low 
tide,  and  how  it  stirs  ( God  knows  how !)  long 
dead  dreams  into  a  wistful  semblance  of  life. 
You  know,  if  a  New  Yorker,  how  the  stink 
of  the  old  ferryboats  blends  with  the  harbor- 
wash  they  float  on  into  a  perfume  that  bites 
to  the  core  of  your  soul.  Well,  there  is  all 
this  and  more — how  much  more! — in  the 
smell  of  the  wet  wood-pavement  in  Paris. 

Only  rhyme  can  recall  that  fragrance. 

And  this  prose  is  a  sorry  tool. 

Yes;  the  wood-pavement  is  in  my  verse 
and  the  man  that  washes  it  (no  bouquineur  is 
he!) ,  the  man  that  sweeps  down  the  gutters, 
full  and  flowing  rivulets,  with  rhythmic  half- 
circles  of  his  great  besom  of  twigs.  Rhythmic 
self-expression  is  permitted  to  him — he  has 
no  publishers! 

Further,  because  it  was  springtime  in  my 
verses,  the  air  about  the  stalls  was  white  with 
the  fluffy  down  that  carries  the  seed  of  the 
poplars.  One  can  allegorise  that  poplar- 


42   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

down  in  singing  verse  and  hint  into  it  many 
meanings,  very  shy-sweet  and  insubstantial, 
but  now— 

Fie  on  this  uninsinuating  prose ! 

There  was  no  poplar-down,  however,  on 
the  day,  my  third  day  in  Paris,  when  Roland 
Elliot  taught  me  to  bouquiner.  That  season 
had  passed. 

"Childe,"  said  I — he  was  turning  over  a 
portfolio  of  engravings — "I  have  discovered 
a  treasure." 

"Bon!  But  don't  let  the  bouquiniste  ob- 
serve your  rapture." 

"And  it  is  only  fifty  centimes." 

"Horribly  dear,"  said  he,  "you  can't 
afford  it."  " 

"Ten  cents?    Of  course  I  can  afford  it." 

And  I  put  my  hand  in  my  pocket. 

"What?"  cried  my  little  friend,  seizing  my 
arm  and  dragging  me  away,  "would  you 
buy  it,  at  first  sight,  like  that?" 

"Of  course  I  would." 

"You  huckster!"  said  he;  "you  pedlar!  you 


EN    CHARETTE  43 

costermongering  cattle-thief  of  an  Autoly- 
cus!  You—" 

"What  have  I  done?" 

"You  crass,  green,  unenlightened  Philis- 
tine! You  desecrating,  recusant,  schismatic 
iconoclast!  You  would  shoot  a  hare  sitting! 
You  would  cheat  at  cards!  You  would  use 
loaded  dice!  Youwouldthimblerig!  You — " 
He  paused  either  for  lack  of  breath  or 
further  illustrations  and  then  continued 
solemnly. 

"No,  my  poor  Hugh;  one  does  not  buy  a 
book  the  moment  it  is  discovered.  One 
waits !" 

"Then  someone  else  may  snap  it  up,"  I 
protested. 

"Of  course;  and  that  is  where  the  sport 
comes  in.  Let  me  explain.  One  discovers 
the  book;  and  a  thrill,  a  glow  of  bibliophil- 
ism,  runs  through  the  marrow  of  the  soul. 
But  one  doesn't  show  it.  On  the  contrary, 
one  assumes  a  fatuous  air,  almost  idiotic,  and 
idly  examines  his  trover  from  title  page  to 


44   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

colophon.  Then,  noting  its  price  and  its 
position  in  the  stall,  one  puts  it  back  and, 
still  fatuous  and  degage,  picks  up  another 
and  another.  And  then  one  saunters  away, 
en  vrai  flaneur f  with  that  precious  book  tug- 
ging at  the  heart-strings.  Next  day,  one 
seeks  it  again.  Will  it  be  there  or  not?  Ah, 
the  delicious  torture!  One  approaches,  al- 
ways en  flaneur,  glancing  furtively  at  the 
place.  The  treasure  has  gone!  Horror 
fills  the  soul,  but  not  despair.  Smiling 
haggardly,  one  searches  the  rows.  Joy!  it  is 
there ;  and  once  again  the  flame  of  bibliophil- 
ism  leaps  ecstatic.  But  does  one  buy  the 
book?  Jamais  de  la  vie! — one  goes  away. 
And  one  returns.  And  one  goes  away  and 
returns,  until  the  delight  and  suspense  are 
almost  intolerable.  And  one  wakes  at  night 
and  thinks  of  the  book  lying  expectant,  a 
padlocked  prisoner,  in  its  box  on  the  quai, 
listening  to  the  flow  of  the  river,  the  rustling 
of  the  poplars  and  the  tramp  of  belated  feet. 
At  last!  the  book  too  is  ready  and  the  time 


EN    CHARETTE  45 

has  come.  One  goes  early  to  the  quad  on  the 
morrow,  to  be  there  when  the  stalls  are  un- 
locked; and,  mon  Dieu,  it  is  raining;  the 
bouquiniste  will  open  no  box  today.  And 
rain  next  day  and  the  next,  and  then — " 

"And  then?"  I  asked;  for  a  tumult  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street  made  him  pause. 

"One  buys  the  book !"  he  cried.  "But  let's 
see  what  the  fun  is  at  the  School." 

"What  School?"  I  asked. 

"L'Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,"  he  answered; 
and  we  dashed  across  the  street. 

"It's  a  charette"  said  the  Infant,  joy- 
ously. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Those  are  charettes"  he  answered,  point- 
ing to  a  row  of  two-wheeled  hand  carts 
drawn  up,  like  a  battery,  against  the  edge  of 
the  sidewalk.  They  were  laden  with  huge 
white  drawings,  pasted  on  frames  and 
mounted  on  dark  green  paper;  and  between 
the  carts  and  the  door  of  the  School  a  crowd 
of  students  rushed  ant-like  to  and  fro. 


46   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

What  students! — in  shirt-sleeves,  with 
flapping  pantaloons  of  brown  velveteen; 
students  in  blouses,  yellow  linen  reaching  to 
the  knees,  most  filthily  and  prismatically  be- 
smeared; students  with  long  hair,  with 
cropped  hair,  with  faces  streaked  with  ink 
and  colours,  with  long  black  beards. 

Quels  types! — and  what  sweating  haste. 
They  dashed  with  the  great  drawings  from 
the  charettes  through  the  open  door,  to  re- 
turn empty-handed  and  panting. 

Panting?  They  were  all  panting;  tout  le 
monde  soufflent. 

"The  drawings  must  be  in  at  two  o'clock," 
explained  Roland.  "See!  the  guardian  is 
getting  ready  to  close  the  grille.  The  ateliers 
are  far  away,  many  of  them;  and  the  char- 
ettes are  often  pulled  a  mile  on  a  hard  run. 
Tiens!  an  express  charette" 

It  came  down  the  quai,  this  cart,  past  Vol- 
taire's sneering  statue,  pushed  by  two  shout- 
ing maniacs  behind,  drawn  by  a  student 
harnessed  to  leather  traces  in  front.  Along- 


EN    CHARETTE  47 

side  galloped  a  little  youth,  frowsily  be- 
bearded,  carrying  in  one  hand  a  pail,  in  the 
other  a  bunch  of  narrow  gilt  paper. 

"Paste,"  explained  Roland,  indicating  the 
pail.  "They  could  not  quite  finish;  and  it's 
one  minute  to  two." 

The  cart  stopped,  the  drawings  were 
whipped  out,  and  then — paste!  Great  gobs 
of  it  fell  on  the  sidewalk;  blouses  and  vel- 
veteens were  stickily  smeared;  and  dripping 
hands  were  wiped  on  the  tossing  black  hair 
of  unconscious  neighbours.  And  in  thirty 
seconds  the  gilt  paper  was  in  place  and  the 
drawings  vanished  within. 

Not  so  the  little  youth  with  the  beard  and 
the  paste.  He  poured  what  remained  into 
a  brown  paper  bag  and  approached  the  door 
with  this  bomb  concealed  behind  him. 

"Another  express!"  cried  the  Childe;  but 
my  eyes  were  filled  with  the  bomb-bearer. 
He  was  now  near  the  door,  against  which 
leaned  a  pursy,  official-looking  man  in  a  blue 
uniform. 


"Guardian  des  Beaux  Arts"  was  adver- 
tised by  every  pose  and  gesture,  "c'est  deja 
grand'  chose!" 

He  was  watching  the  rush  of  the  belated 
charette  with  an  indulgent  smile.  His  lunch- 
eon had  touched  his  puffed  face  with  flush- 
ing content;  and,  tiens!  what  was  a  minute 
or  so,  after  all?  They  should  enter,  les 
enfants — 

It  was  at  this  point,  if  I  have  read  him 
aright,  that  the  bomb  was  thrown.  Aimed, 
not  at  him,  but  at  the  wall  just  above  his 
head,  it  broke,  the  clammy,  mucilaginous 
thing,  in  a  white,  wet,  lumpy  shower  — 

Alas,  poor  guardian! 

There  were  epic  oaths  and  shoutings  and 
laughter,  and  the  angry  clang  of  the  iron 
grille  as  it  closed  behind  the  dripping  official. 

"Atelier  Lalou,  and  too  late,"  said  Roland, 
as  the  charette  halted  amid  frenetic  yells. 
The  students  ran  to  the  closed  grille,  beat 
against  it  and  screamed  like  lost  souls  to  the 


EN    CHARETTE  49 

pasty  guardian  who  glowered  behind  it, 
Satanic. 

All  save  one.  He  lay,  the  lad  in  the  har- 
ness, quite  still  under  the  charette  with  his 
blond  head  in  the  gutter.  The  Childe  and 
I  pulled  him  out  and  laid  him  on  the  side- 
walk. Chalk-white  and  unconscious,  he  be- 
came at  once  then  center  of  a  ring  of  com- 
rades. 

"He  is  an  American,"  shouted  the  Infant; 
"it's  our  affair.  Hold  his  pretty  head,  Hugh. 
I'll  get  brandy." 

This  elixir  is  never  far  to  seek  in  Paris; 
and  presently  I  was  adjusting  his  head  (it 
merited  the  Infant's  adjective)  to  the  recep- 
tion of  astonishing  quantities  of  fine  cham- 
pagne. Half  an  hour  later,  he  was  able  to 
give  us  his  address ;  and  we  drove  him  to  his 
rooms  on  the  Rue  de  Vaugirard.  Once  on 
the  sofa  in  his  own  den  he  revived  rapidly. 

"If  I  weren't  so  drunk,"  he  began,  "I'd 
guess  riddle." 

"What  riddle?"  I  asked. 


50   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Riddle  why  Cyril  Harley  is  very  drunk," 
he  explained. 

"You  fainted  from  running  too  hard  with 
Lalou's  charette"  said  Roland;  "and  I  filled 
you  up  with  brandy." 

"My  name,"  remarked  the  student,  after 
thinking  over  this  observation,  "is  architec- 
ture. What  kind  of  architecture?" 

"Doric,"  I  suggested. 

"Ionic,"  said  he,  taking  hold  of  his  head, 
"all  volutes  at  the  top.  It's  most  interesting 
to  be  intoxicated — Ionic  column,  all  volutes 
at  the  top.  What's  little  fellow's  name?" 

"Roland  Elliot,"  I  answered. 

"What's  Roland  nickname  of?" 

"Roland  is  the  nickname  for  the  Childe," 
said  its  owner. 

"Childe  Roland  to  the  dark  tower  came," 
murmured  Cyril,  drowsily.  "I  have  some- 
thing, somewhere  in  my  volutes — a  what? — • 
a  letter  —  introduction  • —  Childe  Roland  — > 
from — someone — old  Bill  Watson — tomor- 


row." 


EN    CHARETTE  51 

"Yes;  tomorrow,"  said  the  Childe;  "we 
will  call  tomorrow  and  see  how  you  are." 

Cyril  closed  his  eyes,  snored  gently,  and 
awoke. 

"Other  chap?"  he  said,  pointing  at  me. 

"Hugh  Lyddon,"  answered  Roland. 

"Stroke,"  whispered  Cyril;  "old  drunken 
Yale  stroke — good-night." 

"I  am,"  he  proclaimed,  after  a  short 
slumber,  "an  admirable  example — inebriated 
Ionic — proud  creator — entirely  new — dis- 
order of  architecture." 

And  he  sank  into  the  sleep  of  fatigue  and 
intoxication. 

We  stayed  in  his  rooms,  dining  on  what 
scraps  we  found,  till  after  midnight,  when 
his  regular  breathing  and  pulse  assured  us 
that  all  was  well. 

"He  is  a  fine  fellow  that,"  said  the  In- 
fant; "and  I  shall  like  him.  His  taste  in 
books  is  elegant  and  catholic;  he  is  poor;  he 
smokes  (they  are  all  gone,  by  the  way) 
cigarettes  paquet  jaune  a  soixante.  And  a 


52   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

friend  of  old  Bill  Watson,  to  boot!  He 
must  be  an  egregiously  bully  chap." 

"But,"  he  added  later,  in  doleful  accents, 
as  we  sauntered  through  the  deserted  streets, 
"there  is  a  fly  in  the  milk,  Hugh." 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"I  foresee  it  all.  Cyril  is  clever.  Cyril  is 
charming.  Cyril  is  handsome.  We  shall 
make  him  a  friend.  We  shall  make  him  a 
Little  One.  And  then" — he  sighed  pro- 
foundly— "he  will  fall  in  love  with  Betty." 

"No,"  said  I,  with  a  jealous  (but  purely 
hypothetical)  melancholy  in  my  heart,  "he 
will,  of  course,  fall  in  love  with  Pruina." 

"With  Betty !"  he  cried,  with  irritation. 

"With  Pruina!"  I  growled;  for  I  had 
good  reason  to  feel  annoyed. 

Then  silence  fell;  and  we  parted  at  his 
door  in  a  passing  shadow  of  disagreement. 

Idiotic  old  Infant!  Why  couldn't  he  see 
that  it  was  far  better  for  him  that  Cyril 
should  love  Pruina. 

I  (by  hypothesis)  should  suffer,  not  he ! 


IV 


THE  BOOK 

"/GREETING  to  your  power,   Little 

^^  One,"  said  Aloys  Guex-Beny,  draw- 
ing an  iron  chair  across  the  gravel  walk. 

"And  to  your  work,  petit"  I  answered, 
obedient  to  the  letter  of  our  code. 

As  Aloys  adjusted  his  long,  gaunt  frame 
to  the  inadequate  chair,  I  could  not  forbear 
smiling  at  our  diminutives.  But  there  was 
no  trace  of  amusement  on  that  noble,  ascetic 
face. 

"I  am  glad,"  he  began,  "to  find  you  work- 
ing, as  a  true  poet  should  work,  under  the 
seven-fingered  benediction  of  the  marron- 
niers  of  our  Luxembourg." 

"Thank  you,"  I  answered,  "that  is  a  sweet 
and  stimulating  thought.  My  work  will  be 
the  nobler  for  it." 


54   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"No  thought  of  mine,"  said  he;  "only  a 
wayward  fancy  from  the  Book.  And  what 
is  your  work?" 

"I  am  sharpening  my  tools,"  said  I,  "and 
trying  to  learn  to  use  them.  And  the  more 
I  try-" 

"I  know,"  he  interrupted;  "before  the 
Book  came  I  also  tried  to  write.  Art  is 
long." 

"I  am  not  impressed  by  its  length,  Little 
Aloys,"  I  explained;  "but  rather  by  its 
quintessences  of  refinement.  We  humans 
have  but  five  or  six  simple  emotions,  some 
half  dozen  attractions  and  repulsions ;  and  to 
phrase  these  we  have,  say,  fifteen  or  twenty 
thousand  words  that  we  can  tangle  into  what 
complexities  we  please.  And  each  of  these 
words  has  its  history  reaching  back  to  man's 
beginnings,  its  connotations,  its  special 
meaning  to  the  man  that  uses  it,  besides  the 
reflected  colour  it  gets  from  neighbouring 
words  and  its  place  in  the  phrase  sequence. 
Now,  with  so  little  to  say  and  so  much  to  say 


THE    BOOK  55 

it  with,  I  believe  that  man,  for  the  next 
thousand  years  or  so,  must  perfect  his  tools. 
Out  of  the  perfected  tool  will  be  born  the 
artist  to  use  it ;  and  man,  in  some  far  future 
of  self-expression,  will  be  finally  self- 
revealed.  That  is  the  goal  I  work  for:  the 
word  for  the  word's  sake.  And  nothing  else 
matters." 

He  looked  at  me  and  shook  his  head. 

"And  your  reward?"  he  asked. 

"The  work,"  said  I. 

"Only  the  work?" 

"No,"  I  confessed ;  "perhaps,  years  hence, 
there  may  come  a  little  poem,  a  little  phrase, 
something  that  men  will  remember  when  I 
am  dead — something  like  'the  desire  of  the 
moth  for  the  star' — you  know,  perhaps — " 

"I  know,"  said  he,  with  a  sympathising 
smile;  "I  know.  And  yet,"  he  hesitated  for 
an  instant  and  then  went  on,  "you  are  right. 
A  man  must  obey  the  call  of  his  own  spirit. 
The  word  for  the  word's  sake — so  be  it  1  But 
remember  that  to  be  a  Word-man  you  must 


56   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

be  also  a  Thing-man.  You  must  write  with 
granite-grit,  with  steel-filings,  with  sap  of 
the  leaf,  with  spume  of  the  sea.  Flint  and 
steel ! — that's  your  symbol.  For  what  says  the 
Book?  'The  sparks  of  the  Spirit  leap  from 
the  clash  of  Things.'  " 

He  was  interrupted  by  the  outstretched 
hand,  the  dingy  shawl  and  the  smile  of 
wrinkled  content  that  receive  the  rental  of 
the  chairs.  When  we  had  each  paid  our  ten 
centimes,  Aloys  folded  his  yellow  check  and 
put  it  in  his  buttonhole. 

"The  only  order  I  shall  ever  wear,"  said 
he.  "Two  sous!  and  the  freedom  of  a  Lux- 
embourg chair  for  a  whole  sunny  Parisian 
day.  Two  sous  foretaste  of  heaven,  Little 
One! 

"But  as  to  your  art,"  he  continued,  "be  a 
Thing-man!  Hunt  for  your  facts,  the  flint- 
iest, sharpest,  individualest  facts  you  can 
find,  and  hammer  'em  together.  Hammer 
'em  up  and  down,  right  and  left,  day  and 
night,  and  let  the  spirit  sparks  fall  on  the 


THE   BOOK  57 

world.  That's  art,  Little  One,  the  highest 
art  there  is !  Take  that  Pantheon  over  there" 
—he  pointed  at  the  great  grey  dome  lifting 
above  the  trees — "and  clash  it  against  the 
Brooklyn  Bridge.  Lord!  what  a  spark  you 
get.  Take  a  king,  that  helmeted  Prussian 
for  example,  and  pound  him  against  a  dry 
chunk  of  Daily  Bread.  More  sparks  and 
big  ones!  Take  that  priest" — he  indicated 
an  evil  mouth  muttering  over  a  breviary — 
"and  beat  him  against  Pasteur.  There's  a 
shower  for  you!  Take  any  two  things  that 
are  hard  enough  and  antithetic  enough  and 
you  can  clash  out  illumination.  Antithesis 
is  the  discovery  of  fire!" 

"Excellent,"  I  exclaimed.  "I  shall  bor- 
row that  idea." 

"And  shun  abstractions,"  he  went  on. 
"The  modern  world  welters  in  them.  They 
fill  men's  minds  like  an  opiate  vapour,  so  that 
the  Real  looms  like  a  ghost.  Remember  al- 
ways the  saying  of  the  Book:  'Beware  the 
Word:  it  is  either  Thing  or  Fiend.' " 


58   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"The  Book,"  said  I.  "I  wish  you  would 
tell  me  about  it.  Little  Roland  told  me  that 
you  were  writing  a  wonderful  book,  but 
would  tell  me  no  more." 

"I  wish  that  Little  Pruina  were  here" — 
my  heart  stirred  with  a  hypothetical  thrill — 
"for  she  tells  of  the  Book  so  lovingly,  so 
daughterly.  She  has  a  filial  love  for  it.  She 
has  only  the  Book  and  me  in  this  world.  I 
have  only  the  Book  and  her.  And  when  I 
die,  she  will  go  on  with  the  work,  that  is — " 

Aloys  paused  and  a  shadow  like  a  pain 
crossed  his  face. 

"That  is—"  I  prompted. 

"That  is  if  she  can  learn  to  read  it.  And 
it  is  hard,  hard  even  for  me." 

"Pray  explain,"  I  begged.  "I  have  vowed 
to  be  true  to  the  work  you  do;  and  I  long 
to  understand  it." 

"To  understand  it,"  he  answered  slowly, 
"we  must  go  far  back,  back  to  the  mingling 
of  the  blood  in  my  veins.  My  father  was  a 
Frenchman  from  the  hot  Midi,  a  true  Latin 


THE    BOOK  59 

in  his  emotions  and  the  lucid  clarity  of  his 
mind.  He  blended  perfect  daring  with  per- 
fect simplicity,  the  characteristic  of  France 
today.  France!  the  nation  that  discovered 
radium  and  still  drinks  camomile  tea! 

"That  was  my  father,  Little  Hugh;  radi- 
um burning  terribly  without  waste  and 
homely,  comforting  camomile. 

"And  he  married  my  mother;  married 
mystic  New  England  in  the  morbid,  dream- 
ing descendant  of  a  dozen  Puritan  divines. 

"I  am  the  son  of  that  union.  I  am  a  mys- 
tic radium  that  burns  out  and  up  into  the 
spirit- world ;  and  yet,  so  potent  is  heredity, 
I  am  not  indifferent  to  the  camomile  of  the 
commonplace. 

"I  pass  over  my  babyhood,  my  boyhood. 
I  hungered !  that  was  all.  Hungered  to  know 
the  Thing  Itself  that  lives  beyond  the  range 
of  our  paltry  senses.  I  sought  and  found, 
what  every  true  modern  finds,  an  eviscerated 
Bible,  fetish  creeds,  and  sterile  churches.  So 
I  turned  from  all  this  (never  mind  the  grop- 


60   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

ing  processes  between)  and  plunged  into  the 
vibrations  that  quiver  between  the  Not-Me 
without  and  the  Me  within. 

"And  the  revelation  came — " 

Aloys  pointed  at  the  pond  behind  the  grey 
palace  built  for  Marie  de  Medicis,  the  pond 
that  lay  sparkling  below  the  terrace  where 
we  sat. 

"There,"  he  said,  "something  that  we  can- 
not see  blows  the  white  veil  of  yonder  foun- 
tain into  rainbows.  The  spray  drifts  far  and 
the  children  at  play  laugh  as  it  kisses  them. 
Something  touches  the  limpid  blue  eye  of 
the  water;  and  it  laughs,  too,  like  the  eye  of  a 
merry  maid.  Something  fills  the  bright  sails 
of  the  toy  boats ;  and  they  rush  through  the 
ripples,  while  their  little  captains,  shouting 
with  joy,  dash  around  the  pond  to  meet 
them.  Something  tosses  the  leaves  of  that 
green  grove  of  plantanes.,  brings  us  the  per- 
fume of  yonder  parterres  and  the  pleasant 
jangle  of  the  Boule'  Miche.  What  is  that 
something,  Little  Hugh?" 


THE   BOOK  61 

"The  air/*  I  answered. 

"The  air!"  he  cried.  "The  invisible-tan- 
gible! We  feel  its  cool  in  the  roof  of  the 
mouth,  its  delicious  no-scent  in  the  nostrils. 
The  flame  of  our  life  burns  in  its  presence, 
flickers  if  it  grows  rare,  dies  if  it  lacks.  And 
what  do  you  call  it?" 

"The  air,"  I  repeated. 

"Ay,"  said  Aloys ;  "so  it  is  called  by  men. 
But  I  call  it  the  most  transparent  garment 
of  the  Spirit  of  Life,  or,  if  you  prefer,  its 
most  legible,  its  most  unambiguous  incarna- 
tion. Man  can  read  its  metaphors  in  its 
ghostlike  mists,  its  love  and  anger  in  zephyr 
and  tempest.  Man's  prayers  and  hymns 
woiild  be  dumb  without  it ;  and  it  is  the  eter- 
nal memory,  too,  of  every  sound  of  earth." 

"The  eternal  memory,"  I  repeated,  as  I 
tried  to  grasp  his  meaning. 

"Yes.  Perhaps  you  have  read  the  Ninth 
Bridgewater  Treatise?  No?  It  is  by  Bab- 
bage,  who  invented  the  calculating  machine. 
He  writes  that  the  air  'is  one  vast  library,  on 


62   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

whose  pages  are  forever  written  all  that  man 
has  ever  said  or  even  whispered.  There,  in 
their  mutable  but  unerring  characters,  mixed 
with  the  earliest  as  well  as  the  latest  sighs  of 
mortality,  stand  forever  recorded,  vows  un- 
redeemed, promises  unfulfilled,  perpetuating 
in  the  united  movements  of  each  particle  the 
testimony  of  man's  changeful  will.' ' 

"Now  I  understand,"  said  I ;  "and  it  is  an 
illuminating  thought." 

"Illuminating,  yes,"  said  Aloys,  "or  still 
better,  a  magnetising  thought,  one  that 
makes  related  thoughts  cohere  and  coherent. 
When  I  found  it,  the  air  ceased  to  be  air; 
its  passions  ceased  to  be  mere  metaphors  of 
the  poets;  its  life-supporting  breath  ceased 
to  be  oxygen;  its  memory  ceased  to  be  (what 
it  was  to  Babbage)  waves  of  eternally  cir- 
cling sound.  It  became  to  me,  then  and  for- 
ever, an  incarnation  of  deity ;  and  I  breathed 
and  breathe  the  spirit  divine." 

Aloys  drew  in  and  slowly  exhaled  a 
mighty  breath. 


THE    BOOK  63 

"So  much  I  had  learned,"  he  continued, 
"and  then  I  married.  For  two  happy  years 
my  wife  shared  my  thoughts  and  hopes  and 
died  in  giving  birth  to  Little  Pruina.  She 
ought,  by  the  way,"  he  added  parentheti- 
cally, "to  be  passing  here  presently  on  her 
way  from  the  Sorbonne.  Well,  one  hard 
winter  day  in  New  England  (it  was  shortly 
before  Pruina  was  born),  I  found  my  wife 
staring  at  a  window-pane  covered  with  the 
white  ferns  and  leafage  of  the  frost.  I 
spoke ;  she  did  not  hear.  I  touched  her  hand ; 
she  started  and  pointed  at  the  window.  'It 
writes/  she  whispered,  'it  writes  words  on  the 
glass.'  I  looked,  but  could  see  nothing  save 
the  frost  that  grew  like  a  tropical  forest 
turned  to  ice.  'That  is  Jack  Frost,  darling/ 
I  said,  'just  old  Jack  Frost.'  'Hush/  she 
answered,  'it  is  the  blessed  air  and  it  writes 
strange  words  on  the  glass.  And  I  cannot 
read  them!' " 

He  paused,  looking  wistfully  at  the  pond, 
all  broken  lights  under  the  crisping  breeze. 


64   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

But  I  knew  that  the  tender  eyes  saw  through 
their  tears  only  the  frosty  window  of  his  old 
New  England  home.  Poor  Little  Aloys ! 

"Our  baby  was  born  soon  after,"  he  went 
on,  "and  my  dying  wife  bade  me  name  it 
Pruina,  the  Hoar-frost.  'I  shall  read  its 
writing  soon/  she  murmured,  'and  many 
strange  books  besides",  many  beautiful 
books!'  And  then  she  left  me — for  a  little 
while.  Life  is  eternal ;  but  happily  its  stages 
are  very  short. 

"So  she  died,  Little  Hugh,  but  her  whisper 
lived  on.  Lived  on  in  my  soul,  and  became 
a  shout  and  a  hunger. 

"The  frost! — she  was  divinely  inspired.  It 
is  in  truth  the  writing  of  the  air — the  work 
of  the  vibrations  of  that  memory  discovered 
by  Babbage,  of  the  emotions  we  use  for 
metaphors,  of  the  life  that  burns  in  our  rush- 
ing blood.  The  frost  writes  the  book  of  the 
air-god !" 

"And  you  have  proved  it?"  I  gasped. 

"And  I  have  proved  it,"  he  answered,  a 


THE    BOOK  65 

ring  of  conquest  in  his  voice;  "proved  it  in 
the  dry  light  of  the  scientific  method ;  proved 
it  by  induction  and  deduction;  proved  it  so 
that  Descartes  would  accept  it,  Bacon  would 
admit  it,  and  Mill  would  use  it  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  his  famous  canons.  The  thing  is 
surel" 

"I  cannot  conceive,"  I  began. 

"It  is  absurdly  simple,"  he  interrupted. 
"One  zero  day,  I  filled  a  small  room  with  the 
steam  of  a  tea-kettle.  That  is  simple,  isn't 
it?" 

I  admitted  so  much. 

"Then  I  sat  in  that  room  for  two  hours 
and  shouted  'O'  at  the  top  of  my  voice  until 
the  window  was  covered  with  frost.  And 
that,  too,  is  simple?" 

"Very,"  said  I. 

"Then,  Little  Hugh,  I  photographed  all 
the  panes  and  compared  them.  Curve  by 
curve,  frond  by  frond,  I  compared  them  and 
found,  as  I  hoped  to  find,  a  recurring  shape 
that  was  stronger  than  the  others.  It  was 


66   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

the  phonetic  frost-symbol  of  the  long  Eng- 
lish O! 

"Of  course,  I  was  months  in  arriving  at 
this  one  phonetic.  I  tried  other  rooms,  ob- 
]ong,  square,  high,  low.  I  used  glass  of 

•ious  qualities,  colours,  thicknesses.  And 
die  O  was  always  there. 

"Then  I  tried  A,  in  the  same  rooms,  on 

the  same  glass.    Victory!    The  O  was  gone 

r  very  rare;  and  in  its  place  was  another 

-ibol,  the  phonetic  of  the  name-sound  of 
ihe  English  A;  I  had  applied,  as  you  see, 
Mills'  Second  Canon,  the  Method  of  Differ- 
ence." 

I  invented  and  uttered  a  croaking  noise 
intended  to  cloak  ignorance  and  flaunt  ac- 
quiescence. 

"These  two  sounds,"  he  continued,  "were 
now  shouted  alternately  and  tested  and  re- 
tested  in  a  thousand  ways.  It  took  patience, 
T  ittle  One;  for,  consider,  my  shoutings 
j^ttled  against  the  vibrations  of  the  whole 
life  of  the  air,  since  it  first  appeared  on  earth. 


THE    BOOK  67 

"But  I  am  very,  very  patient.  There  are 
thirty-two  elementary  sounds  in  English; 
and  it  required  years  to  discover,  test  and 
recognise  those  sounds  in  the  frost  writing. 
Some,  aspirate  hissings  and  the  like,  elude 
me  still.  That  done,  I  had  to  study  and  re- 
shape, for  my  own  use,  the  whole  science  of 
phonetics.  You  see  .  .  ." 

Here  Aloys  enthusiastically  lifted  himself 
above  my  mental  range  and  disappeared  in  a 
mist  of  strange  words.  I  caught  "wave-mo- 
tions" and  "pitch-tones"  and  "phrase-rela- 
tions," and,  with  a  feeling  of  relief,  heard 
much  learning  as  to  the  complications  caused 
by  the  nose,  mouth  and  larynx.  The  larynx, 
it  seems,  plays  the  mischief  with  phonetics, 
aided  and  abetted  by  the  nose.  At  last  he 
came  down  to  earth  with  these  words : 

"And  all  these  obscure  elements  I  had  to 
trace  to  their  frost  effects  for  purposes  of 
elimination.  That  is,  I  tried  to  do  so,  and 
with  success  enough  to  give  me  the  final 
proof  I  sought,  the  proof  of  Results.  At  the 


68   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

end  of  seventeen  years,  I  could  read  the 
frost! — badly,  to  be  sure,  with  gaps  and 
guesses  innumerable,  but — I  could  read  the 
frost!" 

I  shook  him  hard  by  his  thin  hand.  I 
could  not  help  it.  The  man  was  so  big,  so 
earnest,  so  real,  that  his  discovery  (to  me 
who  am  no  scientist)  seemed  proved.  I  ac- 
cept the  wireless  telegraph  with  infant 
credulity  and  perfect  ignorance — why  not 
this? 

"I  honour  and  believe  you,"  I  cried.  "So 
this  is  the  Book?" 

"Thank  you,"  he  said,  nursing  his  right 
hand  with  his  left.  "May  your  faith  be  as 
strong  as  your  grip.  No;  this  is  not  the 
Book,  not  yet.  Alas !  I  found,  when  I  came 
to  read,  little  but  banalities.  Those  that 
shout  the  loudest,  Little  One,  are  not  always 
the  worthiest  to  be  remembered — " 

I  nodded  violently. 

—and  I  got  little  but  roarings,  plati- 
tudes from  the  pulpit  and  demagogies  from 


THE    BOOK  69 

the  stump.  May  they  melt  as  the  frost 
melts!" 

I  acquiesced  heartily. 

"After  three  years  of  such  inanities,  when 
I  had  mastered,  at  least  in  part,  the  alphabet 
of  my  frost,  a  change  came.  It  came  here  in 
Paris.  I  caught  a  phrase,  at  rare  intervals, 
big  with  meaning;  and  these  grew  more  and 
more  frequent  until  at  last  the  truth  broke 
into  my  soul  like  a  rush  of  wings — the  truth 
that  the  air  itself,  or  that  which  it  embodies, 
was  writing  direct  to  me!" 

His  words  beat  violently  against  the  gen- 
erous limits  of  my  credulity ;  then  I  enlarged 
the  realm  of  faith  a  little  (why  not?)  and 
silently  extended  a  proselyte  hand. 

"One  finger,"  he  said,  smiling,  projecting 
the  index;  "my  old  bones  fear  your  young 
enthusiasms.  I  am  happy,  very  happy  in 
your  belief.  Belief! — in  a  direct,  concrete, 
sense-compelling  revelation  from  the  spirit 
world.  Life  holds  no  other  promise  than  this 
—nothing  else  matters." 


70   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Was  he  right,  I  wondered?  Would  man 
indeed  harken  unto  a  eff able-ineffable? 
Would  he  love — 

"See,"  said  Aloys,  looking  toward  the 
pond;  "it  might  be  her  mother  twenty  years 
ago.  See  the  light  on  her  warm  hair  and  how 
she  moves,  slender  and  girlish,  through  that 
ecstasy  of  Paris  sunshine.  All  her  dear 
mother,  my  Pruina." 

As  I  saw  her  coming,  an  entangling 
hypothesis,  a  net  of  "supposes"  and  "ifs," 
caught  my  soul;  and  freedom  was  only  ob- 
tained by  the  admission  that,  in  such  pre- 
posterous circumstances,  something  else  or 
someone  else  might  matter  considerably. 

She  mounted  the  white  steps,  that  Pruina, 
all  gold  and  flush  and  happy  motion,  kissed 
her  father  and  put  her  soft  hand  in  mine. 

"Greeting  to  your  power,  Little  One," 
said  she ;  and  her  voice,  too,  seemed  wrought 
of  red  gold. 

"And  to  your  work,  petite!'' 


ALCHEMY 

AKE  my  chair,"  said  Aloys  to  Pruina, 
"and  tell  Little  Hugh  more  about  the 
Book.  I  want  to  browse  awhile  along  the 
arcade  of  the  Odeon.  You  see,"  he  added, 
turning  an  explanatory  eye  on  me,  "I  try  to 
remember  that  there  are  already  books  in  the 
world." 

"How  much  have  you  told  him?"  asked 
Pruina. 

"All  the  historic  aspect,"  he  answered, 
"down  to  the  Book  itself.  He  has  the  out- 
line ;  you  may  add  the  colour." 

As  he  descended  the  terrace  steps  and 
moved  slowly  around  the  pond,  he  seemed  in 
that  shadowless  glare  to  be  walking  on  sun- 
shine. We  saw  him  stop  to  look  at  a  baby  in 

71 


72   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

its  hooded  carriage,  stand  for  a  moment  in 
the  blown  spray  of  the  fountain  with  his  face 
upturned,  and  at  last  disappear  around  the 
corner  of  the  brown  palace. 

"Isn't  it  beautiful,"  said  Pruina,  her  voice 
mellow  with  daughter-love,  "to  live  the  life 
he  lives?  Nothing  seems  voiceless  to  him; 
and  all  he  hears  is  refreshing  and  high." 

"This  is  my  first  real  talk  with  him,"  I  an- 
swered ;  "and  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  standing 
before  some  gracious  fire  that  burns  benevo- 
lently without  cracking  or  snapping  or  wast- 
ing. The  image  is  banal,  I  fear,  but  it  sug- 
gests the  warm  content  he  has  left  within 
me." 

"And  isn't  it  beautiful,  too,"  she  went  on, 
"to  be  the  daughter  of  such  a  man.  I  share 
all  his  thoughts  and  dreamings,  Little 
Hugh" — she  spoke  the  diminutive  with  a  shy 
smile  that  added  (by  hypothesis)  not  a  little 
to  the  glow  left  by  Aloys — "and  even  try,  in 
my  stupid  way,  to  help  him  piece  together 


ALCHEMY  73 

the  strange,  disordered  words  he  finds  in  the 
frost." 

Permitting  the  bee  of  hypothesis  to  gather 
what  honey  it  might,  I  said  to  myself  con- 
fidentially that  it  was  indeed  beautiful  to 
be  such  a  daughter. 

Ah,  but  it  was !  The  vital  gold  of  her  hair 
and  voice,  sunlight  playing  in  both,  were  dis- 
tilling into  strange  quintessences,  more 
precious  than  the  dreamings  of  an  alchemist, 
in  the  alembic  of  my  heart.  Great  is  the  vir- 
tue of  an  hypothesis ! 

"And  it  doesn't  matter  a  bit,"  she  con- 
tinued, looking  at  me  with  her  friendly  eyes. 

Autumnal  eyes  (the  sorry  phrase!) ;  eyes 
of  Indian  summer,  warm  and  misty,  tawny 
and  tender;  eyes  with  the  vibrant  life  of 
spring  and  summer  behind  them.  And  as 
they  looked  at  me,  another  element,  I  know 
not  what,  sank  melting  with  a  mist  of  dizzy 
vapours  in  the  alembic.  Master  Alchemist, 
Little  Love,  pray  be  careful  of  that  fragile 
thing! 


74   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"You  are  not  attending,"  said  Pruina. 

"Yes,  yes,"  I  protested;  "I  was  attending 
like  a  tender.  I  agree  with  you  that  it  doesn't 
matter  a  bit." 

"But  I  hadn't  finished  my  question,"  said 
she. 

"I  know  that,"  I  answered  volubly,  my 
brain  reeling  with  the  fumes  aforesaid;  "only 
one  thing  at  a  time  matters  to  anybody ;  and 
most  things  matter  to  nobody ;  so  I  took  the 
chance  of  being  right.  Besides,  a  gorgeous 
acquiscence  fits  better  into  the  colour-scheme 
of  friendship  than  a  blanched  judgment." 

"Acquiescences  are  always  pink,"  com- 
mented Pruina  severely,  "sweety-pink;  and 
I  don't  like  them.  Now  listen.  It  doesn't 
matter  a  bit,  does  it,  whether  the  air  is  writ- 
ing the  Book  or  not,  so  long  as  what  the 
Book  says  is  wonderful  and  true  and  help- 
ful?" 

"Not  a  bit,"  I  agreed  heartily.  "No  one 
who  really  works,  no  true  artist,  whatever 
his  craft,  feels  that  the  results  are  his.  He 


ALCHEMY  75 

can  train  his  hand,  store  his  memory,  fix  his 
attention,  will  to  work,  and  put  himself  into 
the  attitude  for  work.  But  that  is  all;  the 
outcome  is  none  of  his.  I  believe  this  is  true 
of  every  grade,  from  Master  Will  Shake- 
speare down  to  Apprentice  Hugh.  So  it 
doesn't  matter,  Miss  Pruina — " 

She  held  out  her  hand. 

"A  franc,  please,"  said  she,  "toward  the 
next  feast  of  the  Little  Ones.  You  have 
violated  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the  Rule  of 
the  Diminutive." 

"Guilty,"  I  confessed,  paying  my  fine;  "I 
felt  rather  shy  about  it.  So  it  doesn't  mat- 
ter, Little  Pruina — " 

'  Her  name  for  the  first  time !  Ah,  what  a 
stirring  in  the  alembic  as  the  Hoar-frost 
melted  there! 

" — whether  Little  Aloys  is  writing  the 
book  or  only  transcribing  it.  The  product 
in  either  case  is  none  of  his.  His  greatness, 
like  all  human  greatness,  lies  in  his  trans- 
parency. He  lets  through  the  Beyond." 


76   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Her  cheeks  flushed  with  pleasure  at  my 
poor  praise. 

O  rose-petals !  rose-petals !  melting  in  that 
alchemic  brew,  what  tinted  vapours,  what 
vertiginous  fragrance,  fills  the  alembic! 
Have  a  care,  Little  Master,  have  a  care! 

"Or  take  the  thing  simply  as  a  beautiful 
metaphor,"  I  continued,  when  I  had  some- 
what recovered  from  the  rose-petals,  "and 
it  is  still  true." 

"Sermons  in  stones?"  r.he  asked. 

"Precisely.  The  life  of  the  artist  is  one 
long  search  for  metaphors,  for  the  concrete 
expression  of  the  human  emotions.  If — " 

She  laughed  (another  aureate  wonder  in 
the  alembic!)  and  pointed  behind  me.  Under 
the  trees,  toddling  through  the  flecks  of  sun 
on  the  gravel,  was  a  tiny  lad.  He  carried  a 
wooden  spoon  as  long  as  his  fat  little  arm; 
and  his  infant  desires  were  centered  on  a 
new  and  marvelous  application  of  that  spoon. 
He  wanted  to  scoop  up  a  sparrow!  And  no 
Luxembourg  sparrow,  however  plump  and 


ALCHEMY  77 

friendly,  would  allow  itself  to  be  scooped. 
Still,  undiscouraged  by  repeated  failure, 
this  great-hearted  morsel  of  a  man  ap- 
proached flock  after  flock  of  sparrows, 
scooped  gravely,  watched  their  scattering 
flight  with  solemn  eyes  and  tottered  off  with 
outstretched  spoon  to  the  next  gathering. 

And  we  laughed  together  (add  that  witch- 
ing "together"  to  your  mysteries,  Little 
Alchemist!)  till  hunter  and  spoon  had  van- 
ished on  their  quest  among  the  grey  tree- 
trunks. 

"If—  "  prompted  Pruina. 

"If — but  I  have  forgotten  what  I  was 
trying  to  say." 

•In  truth,  I  was  deliciously  intoxicated  with 
the  perfumed  alchemic  vapours.  Little  One, 
cannot  you  do  your  work  of  transmutation 
without  this  disabling  inebriety? 

"Metaphors—  "  suggested  Pruina. 

"If,"  said  I,  striving  hard  to  save  the  re- 
mainder of  my  wits,  "if  I  wanted  a  metaphor 
for  art,  for  example,  I  might  take  that  child 


78   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

and  his  wooden  spoon.  Art,  I  might  say,  is 
the  effort  to  scoop  up  a  sparrow  with  a  wood- 
en spoon;  the  effort  to  capture  a  winged 
thought  with  a  homely  instrument.  Look  at 
the  greatest  picture  or  statue  or  poem.  It 
is  a  failure,  of  course— 

"Of  course,"  sighed  Pruina.  I  never  be- 
fore understood  the  wistful  significance  of  a 
sigh. 

"Of  course,"  and  I  also  sighed,  "yet  if  the 
artist  has  succeeded  in  hinting  the  spoon, 
the  effort  to  scoop  and  the  sparrow,  he  has 
(at  least  I  think  so)  created  a  work  of  art. 
But  I  fear  I'm  talking  arrant  twaddle." 

"It  seems  quite  wise  to  me,"  she  said  kind- 
ly; "and  my  poor  art — I  write  music,  you 
know — is  nothing  but  spoon  and  frightened 
sparrows.  I  can't  even  show  how  hard  I 
try  to  scoop." 

She  illustrated  with  an  exquisite  hand, 
making  (have  a  care,  Sir,  I  pray!)  a 
swirling,  rosy  eddy  in  the  crucible. 

"Yet  for  all  one's  failures,"  said  she,  her 


ALCHEMY  79 

eyes  dreaming  out  on  the  colour  and  happy 
stir  before  us,  "nothing  else  seems  to  matter. 
It's  the  affection  for  the  thing  that  counts." 

"It's  the  love,"  I  assented. 

How  the  alembic  boils  below  the  mantling 
veil  of  vapour.  Oh,  the  golden  glamour, 
dear  Master,  the  fragrant  colour! 

"It's  the  love,"  said  she. 

With  these  words  the  fumes  of  the  alembic 
floated  upward,  pervaded  my  brain,  and  I 
knew  that  I  was  marvelously  gifted  thereby 
with  divine  eloquence.  A  quaint  and  ex- 
quisite vocabulary  suddenly  swam  into  my 
being  like  a  shoal  of  little  fish,  darting,  play- 
ing, leaping  through  waves  of  limpid 
thought. 

Words? — it  was  as  if  a  casket  of  jewels 
emptied  there  had  quickened  into  the  petu- 
lent,  sinuous  motions  of  piscine  life.  Sap- 
phires interflashing  azure  understandings; 
topazes  giving  gold  for  gold;  rubies  close 
together  and  blushingly  aware;  shy  opals, 
their  red  hearts  aglow,  whispering  bashful 


80   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

chromatics;  diamonds,  emeralds,  crysolites, 
beryls,  hyacinths — all  swirled,  with  pris- 
matic interplay  of  dainty  affection,  in  my 
eloquent  brain. 

For  I  was  about  to  be  very  eloquent.  Al- 
though to  a  critical  and  humorous  reader  the 
image  I  have  used  may  suggest  a  brain  like 
a  bowl  of  goldfish,  it  brought  no  such  sug- 
gestion to  me.  No!  I  was  surely  about  to 
be  egregiously  eloquent. 

The  thing  was  inevitable.  Such  a  poly- 
chromatic shoal!  All  the  warm,  friendly, 
intimate  words;  all  the  filmy,  whispering, 
hinting  ones;  all  the  old  chivalric,  patrician 
courtesies;  all  the  yearning,  sighing,  caress- 
ing ideals  of  the  heart. 

And  such  a  mise  en  scene!  Paris,  the  very 
foyer  of  all  tenderness  and  mother  of  ardent 
speech;  the  Gardens  where  happy  lovers 
wander  forever  and  the  leaves  of  the  mar- 
ronniers  flutter  under  the  amorous  rain  of  the 
sunshine;  the  statues,  white  against  the 
green,  of  those  great  queens  that  greatly 


ALCHEMY  81 

loved  of  old;  the  marble  poets  on  the  lawns 
whose  songs  environ  us;  and  the  aspiring 
fountain,  and  the  babies,  the  sparrows,  the 
shoutings  and  the  easy  Gallic  laughter. 
Surely,  I  shall  be  finely  eloquent — fa  va  tout 
seull 

Love  is  my  theme,  love  in  its  whole  rosy 
history  from  the  Garden  of  Eve  to  the 
Garden  of  Pruina.  Immortal  lovers  of  olden 
time  shall  come  and  go  therein;  and  there 
shall  be  shepherds  with  crooks,  and  rose- 
wreathed  maidens,  and  myrtles,  and  noon- 
day trystings  under  a  great  oak,  and  the 
pipings  of  a  rustic  flute.  And  there  shall  be 
enchantment  there  and  glamourie  almost 
beyond  the  poor  hintings  of  words;  and  it 
shall  all  say  (but  ah!  how  intangibly,  in- 
effably and,  of  course,  altogether  hypotheti- 
cally!)  "Pruina,  I  love  you!" 

So!  All  is  planned,  foreseen,  even  to  the 
faltering,  dying  fall  of  the  tender  climax. 
I  have  only  to  begin. 

I  glanced  at  Pruina.    Her  eyes  were  day- 


82   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

dreaming.  I  fixed  mine  on  the  blue  empti- 
ness above  the  veil  of  the  fountain  and  began 
my  oration. 

"Love  is  love,"  said  I. 

She  did  not  speak,  but  moved  ever  so  little. 
And  by  the  warm  Indian  Summer  in  my 
soul,  I  knew  that  she  was  looking  at  me 
kindly. 

An  instinct  of  oratorical  reserve  told  me 
to  emphasize  my  opening  words  by  a 
thoughtful  silence. 

I  followed  that  by  another  silence,  tense 
and  expectant — 

And  by  another,  veiled  and  mysterious — 

Then  I  spoke  again. 

"I  wonder,"  I  remarked,  "if  the  little  lad 
scooped  up  his  sparrow  at  last." 

"I  wonder,"  said  Pruina. 

Another  silence,  asonian,  surcharged  with 
blessedness — 

"The  best  proof  of  a  good  talk,"  said  the 
voice  of  Aloys  Guex-Beny,  "is  an  unembar- 


ALCHEMY  88 

passed  taciturnity;  so  I  need  not  ask  how 
you  have  fared." 

"Yes,"  I  answered,  "we  have  talked  of  the 
Book  and  much  besides.  We  have  had,  as 
Dr.  Johnson  used  to  say,  a  good  talk,  Sir." 

"The  Book,"  said  he;  "I  must  get  back 
to  its  enigmas." 

"And  I  to  my  spoon  and  sparrow,"  said 
Pruina. 

"And  I  to  my  failure,"  I  groaned,  tapping 
my  serviette.  "Futilities,  to  be  continued." 

"Health  to  your  power,  Little  One,"  they 
chorused. 

"And  to  your  work,  petits" 

So  they  left  me,  hand  in  hand. 

But  I  did  not  work.  That  afternoon  I 
wrote  the  octave  and  the  first  tercet  of  my 

sonnet  to  Love. 

I 

It  was  completed  later  as  follows — 
But  I  forget  my  pact! — those  publishers! 
Besides,  it  doesn't  matter.    After  all,  the 
poem  and  my  emotions  are  equally  hypo- 
thetical. 


VI 


LES  APACHES 

"JfOICI  de  bans  lacets  depuis  un  sou  le 
pair!" 

But  the  voice  proclaiming  the  impeccable 
shoe-laces  was  not  the  funereal  bass  mono- 
tone of  the  old  blind  man  that  stands  (in  all 
weathers,  poor  fellow)  at  the  gates  of  the 
Garden,  Eden-gates  that  he  never  enters. 

For  it  was  a  cheerful  tenor,  the  voice,  and 
flagrantly  American,  the  accent.  It  be- 
longed to  Cyril  Harley. 

Three  months  had  passed  since  the  Childe 
and  I  pulled  him  from  under  the  cliarette 
and  left  him,  an  involuntary  Silenus,  to  the 
slumber  of  ebriety. 

When  he  was  sober  (to  save  misunder- 
standing I  note  that  he  was  always  sober), 

84 


LES    APACHES  85 

we  found  in  him  all  the  virtues,  and  more, 
that  the  Infant  had  foretold..  A  clever 
architect  and  a  mighty  dreamer,  he -stirred 
us  by  the  minglings  of  his  craft  and  his 
visions,  by  the  subtleties  he  read  into  the* 
grey  facades  of  Paris,  by  the  spiritualities 
he  promised  to  build  into  the  living  church. 
We  could  not  always  follow  him,  to  be  sure ; 
for  he  used  a  verbal  algebra  that  sometimes 
defied  solution.  Roland's  quip,  "the  lad  of 
the  stimulating  equations,"  is  finely  descrip- 
tive. 

He  had  that  highest  art  of  friendship,  the 
art  of  seeing  only  the  high-lights  of  human 
nature  and  of  making  those  lights  intenser. 
Dignity  grew  in  his  presence.  "I  always 
meet  him  feeling  Childe  and  leave  him  feel- 
ing Roland,"  said  the  merry  owner  of  that 
name. 

Despite  this  gift,  perhaps  because  of  this 
gift,  Cyril's  Parisian  friends  were  few.  His 
art,  his  reading  and  his  economies  (he  was 
forced  to  extreme  frugality)  deprived  him  of 


86   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

all  comradeship  save  that  of  Boheme — and 
that  he  shrank  from.  "A  Bohemian  mind  in 
a  Puritan  body;  that's  me,"  said  Cyril,  and 
remained  solitary. 

Our  coming  changed  all  that.  We  Little 
Ones  found  in  him  a  minikin  humour,  a 
whimsic  bias,  that  stamped  him  Ours.  Also, 
we  needed  his  equations  in  our  'evening 
Nurseries. 

Those  Nurseries!  They  had  in  them  the 
piquancy  and  salience  that  spring  from 
antithesis.  We  were  Little  Ones,  yet  prattled 
of  great  things.  We  made  the  infant  word 
clash  with  the  full-grown  thought,  and  lisped 
and  stuttered  high  philosophies.  From  the 
pages  of  Mother  Goose  we  reached  pudgy 
hands  up  to  Shakespeare,  and  scaled  alps  of 
cold  truth  in  the  history  of  Jack  and  Jill. 
The  cosmos  was  tossed  from  hand  to  hand  as 
a  pink  worsted  ball;  and  we  heard  sphere- 
music  (for  Pruina  would  have  it  so)  in  a 
lullaby.  As 'we  compared  the  dolls  of  Betty 
and  Roland,  Praxiteles  trembled  and  Rodin 


LES   APACHES  87 

grew  pale.  Nothing  human  escaped  our 
prying  baby  curiosity,  our  nursery  meta- 
phors. A  common  rubber  rattle,  shaken  by 
the  Infant,  became  the  cogito  ergo  sum  of 
Descartes.  "Me  rattles,"  said  he,  at  the 
close  of  a  long  discussion,  "me  rattles;  so  I 
guess  me  is" — an  immemorial  phraselet. 

As  we  played  thus  in  the  kindergarten  of 
truth,  Aloys  (who  could  not  well  ape  the 
baby)  beamed  on  us  comprehendingly,  let- 
ting fall  from  time  to  time  some  words  from 
the  great  Book,  words  that  always  served  as 
the  starting  point  for  new  chatter,  fugitive 
and  gravely  gay,  on  the  eternal  quest  of  man 
or  the  elusive  verities  of  art.  In  good  sooth, 
they  were  something  to  hear,  the  epic  bab- 
blings of  our  Nurseries ! 

Plainly  we  had  need  of  Cyril,  both  for  his 
word  and  his  craft.  We  would  buy  him  a 
box  of  blocks;  and  he  should  build  and 
burble  lustily. 

And  thus  it  was,  in  answer  to  our  need, 
that  Cyril  stood  at  the  gate  of  the  Garden, 


88   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

selling  shoe-laces  to  all  the  world.  High 
Priest  Roland  had  devised  a  new  initiation — 

"Void  de  bons  lacets  depuis  un  sou  le 
pair!"  chanted  Cyril. 

"Give  me  my  pair,"  said  I,  handing  him  a 
sou.  "How  do  you  like  it?" 

"It's  colossal,  except  for  the  police.  If 
I'm  pinched  —  the  guillotine!  —  you  make 
three." 

"Three  what,  Cyril?" 

"Three  Little  Ones.  That  Roland-thing 
sends  one  along  every  half  hour.  Miss 
Brown  was  the  last,  a  blue-checked  angel. 
And  I've  sold  a  lot  of  laces  besides.  All  to 
girls.  Brown-eyed  midinettes.  Scientific 
problem  for  you — why  do  only  brown-eyed 
girls  want  shoe-laces?" 

"But  Betty  Brown,"  I  objected,  "has  the 
whole  sky  under  her  lashes." 

"True,  Mr.  Poet;  but  she  was  sent  by  the 
Roland-thing,  and  not  impelled  by  brown- 
eyed  desire  for  laces.  Say,  I  like  your  com- 
pany, Hugh  Lyddon,  but — " 


LES   APACHES  89 

"But?" 

"Your  presence  is  a  restraint  on  trade. 
See  the  brown-eyes  coming.  "Void  de  bons 
lacets  depuis  un  sou  le  pair" 

At  this  hint  I  left  him.  An  hour  and  a 
half  later,  at  the  Colonne  des  Baisers,  he 
was  made  a  Little  One. 

That  evening,  to  mark  the  event,  we  all 
went  to  the  Opera  Comique  (prix  populaire, 
of  course)  to  hear  Madame  Butterfly.  All, 
that  is,  save  Aloys,  who  was  moored  at  home 
by  the  anchor  of  his  fixed  idea. 

I  found  him,  when  I  reached  the  pretty 
apartment  that  overlooked  the  Garden  from 
the  rue  d'  Assas,  busy  with  a  cubical  com- 
plexity of  plate  glass,  a  brazen  engine  he 
called  an  air-pump,  and  an  oily,  colourless 
liquid  which  he  introduced  to  me  as  sulphuric 
acid.  The  air-pump  seemed  a  polished  crea- 
ture; but  the  aspect  of  the  acid  was  unin- 
gratiating. 

I  said  so. 

"Yes,"  he  answered;  "it's  the  vitriol  that 


90   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

certain  parisiennes  throw  into  the  faces  of 
their  successful  rivals.  It  burns  and  dis- 
figures." 

"I  hope  it  won't  explode,"  I  said,  casting 
an  anxious  glance  at  the  disconcerting  loveli- 
ness of  Pruina.  Observe  the  effect  of  stirring 
a  poet's  love  of  colour  and  light  with  the 
spoon  of  hypothesis.  Pruina,  after  three 
months  of  comradeship,  after  all  the  juvenili- 
ties of  the  Nursery,  was  still  disconcerting. 
When  she  appeared,  reason  became  a  mist; 
as  she  drew  near — mirage!  Then  arose,  as 
in  that  first  morning  in  the  Garden,  discord 
between  mind  and  tongue.  My  brain  was 
filled  with  corruscating  eloquence  —  my 
mouth  with  niaiserie.  The  Childe  often  be- 
rated me. 

"With  me,  with  Cyril,"  said  he,  "you  are 
fairly  sane  and  sometimes  rather  brilliant. 
With  Pruina  your  mind  wriggles  like  a  pet 
spaniel." 

"Bully  metaphor!"  I  exclaimed.  "I  have 
watched  it  wriggle  with  the  cold  interest  of  a 


LES   APACHES  91 

scientist.  It's  just  an  experiment,  you  know ; 
besides" — I  hurried  on  to  block  his  protest — 
"y°u  are  a  parallel  case.  Witness  your 
fatuities  with  Betty  Brown.  We  both  should 
be  brayed  for  fools  in  a  mortar." 

"Why  a  mortar?"  said  he.  "Such  asses  as 
we  will  bray  almost  anywhere." 

This  idiocy  will  show,  perhaps,  the  well- 
spring  of  my  banality, 
•"I  hope  it  won't  explode." 

"No  danger,"  said  Aloys.  "This  is  Carre's 
refrigerating  process,  which  I  have  adapted 
to  my  purposes.  You  see  I  put  water  in 
here  and  exhaust  the  air.  That  makes  the 
water  evaporate.  I  dry  the  rarefied  air  with 
the  acid.  That  continues  the  evaporation. 
This  causes  cold;  and  when  the  temperature 
is  sufficiently  reduced  frost  forms  on  the 
glass.  Voila!" 

"I  have  sometimes  wondered,"  I  re- 
marked, watching  (it  was  more  beautiful 
than  any  frost)  Pruina  putting  on  a  pair  of 
new  gloves,  "how  you  got  frost  in  Summer. 


92   NOTHING  ELSF,  MATTERS 

It  is  an  enchanting  process."    This  referred, 
perhaps-,  to  Pruina's  cLiinty  manipulations. 

"Hardly  enchanting,"  he  corrected.  "Let 
us  say  interesting.  An  interesting  process. 
I  might  prefer  the  compression  method — " 

"The  compression  method  might  serve,"  I 
said,  as  Pruina  struggled  with  a  tight  finger. 

" — the  method  of  Perkins,  Twining  and 
others,  using  anhydrous  ammonia,  methyl 
chloride  and  so  on.  But  the  machine  is  large 
and  clumsy — " 

"Nothing  large  or  clumsy  would  do,"  I 
agreed  heartily. — Pruina  must  wear  fives. 
— and  requires  considerable  power — 

"It  does  require  some  power,"  said  I. — It 
did,  rather. 

" — and  moreover,  it  would  not  be  practical 
for  traveling." 

"Decidedly  not."  White  kid,  glace.,  for 
traveling  indeed ! 

"Of  course,"  he  continued,  "these  mechanic 
means  are  but  makeshifts  after  all.  One  gets 
results,  to  be  sure — " 


LES   APACHES  93 

"Yes,"  I  admitted,  as  the  glove  took  at 
last  the  mould  of  the  perfect  hand;  "one  gets 
exquisite  results." 

" — but  the  mise  en  scene  is  not  the  same. 
I  prefer  nature — " 

"So  do  I,"  I  murmured,  watching  the 
eclipse  of  the  red-gold  hair  by  a  vapourous 
scarf. 

" — and  when  we  go  to  Les  Avants  this 
winter,  I  think,  even  if  the  writing  is  the 
same,  that  I  shall  translate  it  better  in  the 
large  air  with  the  white  peaks  above  me." 

"I  am  sure  of  it,  Little  Aloys,"  I  said 
enthusiastically.  "High  thoughts  should  fly 
in  high  altitudes." 

Les  Avants ! — we  are  going  there  together, 
we  three,  in  December;  and  the  vision 
of  snowy  summits  creates  the  anomalous 
emotioi.  of  a  varm  (but  hypothetical)  glow 
in  my  heart.  Les  Avants! 

"I'm  ready  at  last,  Little  Hugh,"  said 
Pruina.  "Do  not  sit  up  for  me,  Little 
Father;  for  we  may  be  rather  late." 


94   NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Rather  late — it  is  a  shuddering  thought; 
but  had  Pruina's  prophecy  not  been  ful- 
filled, this  story  would  not  have  been  written. 

Shuddering,  indeed ! — the  poor  world  left 
standing,  inextinguishably  bored,  in  the  Bal- 
zacian  sands  (whereof  each  grain  is  ennui) 
with  never  a  waving  oasis  of  Hypothesis,  of 
Strategics,  of  the  Beamy  Jimmy  or  the 
Bottle  of  L'Ombre-qui-passe.  Sapristi!  It 
is  well  we  were  late.  True,  the  malignant 
shadow  of  Cadwalader  Bent  (who  even  now 
seems  unreal)  might  still  have  crossed  the 
path  of  Cyril,  might  even  have  blotted  his 
sunshine  forever ;  but  Roland  Elliot,  lacking 
the  chance  that  made  us  late,  would  not  have 
moved  from  a  gallant  deed  to  a  whimsic 
crime,  and  thus  (to  thy  undying  glory,  O 
Childe!)  become  the  hero  of  this  chronicle. 

However  that  may  be,  late  we  were;  and 
it  fell  thus:  After  poor  Madame  Butterfly 
had  ended  her  sanguinary  writhings  across 
the  stage  (in  most  lusty  voice),  we  sought 
forgetfulness  of  her  sufferings  in  the  choco- 


LES    APACHES  95 

late  of — (seek  not  to  know  the  name!) 
Chocolate,  bien  entendu,  was  the  artless 
beverage  of  the  Little  Ones.  Not  that  the 
chocolate  was  artless,  albeit  with  tricksy  art 
it  brutalized  its  advent.  It  came  in  a  huge, 
dinted  can,  wrought  of  a  dingy  metal,  small- 
er above  than  below,  a  can  that  slobbered 
from  a  tawny  lip  and  steamed  ecstatic.  He 
was  stirred,  the  can,  with  a  decomposing 
wooden  spoon;  and  one  could  hear  it  scrape 
through  the  ancient,  unctuous  layers  of 
suave  brown  that  lined  him.  Then,  when 
those  rare  juices  were  blended,  they  were 
poured  thickly  into  the  thick  white  cups ;  and, 
on  my  Little  Honour,  no  god  of  Olympus  or 
Valhalla  ever  lipped  a  nobler  brew. 

On  the  tonic  of  that  decoction  (and  be- 
cause taxis  are  extravagant  and  omnibuses 
are  complets)  the  Little  Ones  must  walk 
home.  It  chanced,  his  heroic  destiny  so 
ordering  it,  that  Roland  led  the  way  with 
Betty;  while  Pruina,  Cyril  and  I  loitered 
behind. 


96   NOTHING  E1.SE  MATTERS 

The  walk,  qua  walk,  deserves  no  record. 
I  was  happy,  en  hypothese,  and  probably 
idiotic ;  but  that  is  my  affair.  Our  talk,  qua 
talk,  deserves  no  record  either. 

The  five  Little  Ones,  bracketed  as  afore- 
said, kept  in  touch  until  they  reached,  on  the 
rue  des  Pyramids,  the  rue  St.  Honor  e. 
There  they  were  checked  by  a  caravan  of 
market  carts,  heaped  with  carrots,  turnips 
and  other  comestibles,  snailing  its  slow  way 
to  Les  Halles.  That  is  to  say,  three  of  the 
five  were  thus  delayed.  Roland  and  Betty 
managed  to  "nip  through."  So  he  told  us 
afterwards. 

The  caravan  having  passed,  we  proceeded 
leisurely,  until  we  reached  the  statue  of 
Jeanne  d'  Arc.  There  we  began  to  run. 
Madly. 

There  was  cause.  Betty  stood  alone  in  the 
middle  of  the  rue  de  Rivoli,  shrieking  for 
help  in  English  and  French  and  beckoning 
frenetic.  Cyril  and  I  sprinted  first  to  her, 
and  there  became  mere  pelting  continua- 


LES    APACHES  97 

tions  of  her  gestures.  These  led  us  to  the 
balustrade  and  steps  that  mark  the  Tuileries 
station  of  the  Metropolitan!. 

It  was  tragi-comic,  that  sidewalk  stage 
under  the  lamp  light.  A  slender  old  man  in 
evening  dress  lay  quite  still,  his  grey  head 
lolling  unpleasantly  over  the  curb,  his  legs 
wide  a-straddle.  Another,  far  from  still,  lay 
prone ;  and  on  this  figure  rode  the  Childe,  as 
if  (like  a  true  Little  One)  he  were  playing 
horse.  Occasionally  when  his  mount  bucked 
too  violently,  he  pounded  its  head  with  the 
solid  cane  he  was  carrying. 

"Hugh,"  he  remarked  calmly,  "if  you 
wouldn't  mind  taking  my  place  on  this 
broncho,  Cyril  and  I  will  apply  some  first 
aid  to  the  injured." 

I  took  the  seat  so  courteously  offered ;  and, 
although  the  Apache  became  instantly  static, 
his  language  took  on  a  high  voltage.  What 
he  said,  being  relevant  only  from  the  side- 
light it  throws  on  the  writer,  is  omitted  be- 
cause (let  us  say)  of  its  want  of  literary 


98    NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

form.  Presently,  to  make  him  more  por- 
table, I  rose  and,  with  a  knee  between  his 
shoulders,  tied  his  wrists  behind  him  with  my 
handkerchief.  An  old  sea-captain  once 
taught  me  the  trick  of  this ;  and  the  Apache, 
if  I  understood  him,  said  that  it  was  ef- 
fectual. 

Meanwhile,  the  Childe  and  Cyril  had  ar- 
ranged the  old  gentleman  in  a  less  tragic 
attitude,  and  were  trying,  under  Betty's  in- 
structions, to  restore  him  to  consciousness. 
They  were  interrupted  by  a  cry  from  Pruina. 

"They're  coming  back,"  said  she. 

We  started  up.  Snaking  rapidly  along 
the  edge  of  the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries  came 
four  silhouettes,  advancing  (observe  how  the 
dramatic  instinct  stirs  in  the  blood  of  this 
France)  exactly  like  bravoes  on  the  stage.  I 
felt,  mixed  with  a  chuckling  amusement,  a 
shadow  of  the  old  thrill  that  preceded  the 
big  games. 

"Team  work!"  I  shouted.  "Down  into 
the  Metro,  girls!  Infant,  guard  your 


LES    APACHES  99 

broncho!  Cyril,  cross  the  street,  run  under 
the  arcade,  and  take  them  in  the  flank  when 
I  get  them  in  play.  And  we'll  rough-house 
poor  old  Harvard." 

So  (take  notice,  Alma  Mater!)  I  went  to 
battle  singing  "Boola." 

Now  for  two  months  past  I  had  been 
working  in  the  salle  de  boxe  of  M — ,  a 
master  of  self-defense  with  the  cane.  He 
had  said  that  very  morning  that  I  was  "al- 
ready not  bad,"  removing  vainglory  there- 
after by  shrewd  raps.  He  had  but  one  theme, 
into  which  he  eternally  modulated — "Keep 
moving  and  swing  for  the  legs." 

Armed  with  this  advice  and  my  cane  of 
unbreakable  cornouiller,  I  charged  the  dra- 
matic silhouettes.  They  spread  out  as  I 
came;  and  I  saw  light  flash  on  steel.  I  drove 
at  their  right  flank  (boola-boola!)  the  man 
next  the  park  railings,  so  that  as  they  closed 
in  Cyril  might  take  them  in  the  rear. 

"Keep  moving  and  swing  for  the  legs;" — 
and  I  kept  moving  (boola-boola!)  and 


100  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

swung  with  all  my  might  (boola!) .  The  un- 
breakable cornouiller  hit  something  and 
broke ;  and  a  man  fell,  howling.  I  dashed  at 
the  biggest  (boola!),  tackling  low;  and  we 
went  down  together.  Lord!  but  it  was  like 
old  times! 

I  fancied  for  an  instant  that  my  Apache 
was  Harvard's  quarter-back  (beg  pardon, 
old  man!)  and  quite  forgot  about  the  knives 
of  his  allies. 

But  Cyril  dM  not  forget.  I  heard  a 
hideous  Indian  war-whoop  and  saw  another 
man  go  down. 

The  quarter-back  became  limp;  the  re- 
maining Apache  made  a  swift-footed  escape ; 
and  our  amusing  romp  was  over. 

The  quarter-back  was  secured  with  Cyril's 
handkerchief,  and  his  victim  (whose  crown 
was  cracked)  with  our  combined  white  ties. 
The  right  flank  man  needed  no  bonds.  M — 
was  right  as  to  "swinging  at  the  legs;"  but 
I  advise  a  heavier  cornouiller ,  say  two  centi- 
metres in  diameter. 


LES    APACHES  101 

"They  look  like  horizontal  atlantes,  mis- 
called caryatides,"  said  architectural  Cyril, 
after  we  had  dragged  our  quarry  to  the 
Metro  station  and  arranged  them  symmet- 
rically. 

The  comment  of  the  police  (lucky  that 
they  came  no  sooner!)  took  the  conventional 
form. 

"Diables  d' Anglais!"  they  cried,  as  they 
opened  the  eternal  notebook. 

"We  are  not  Anglais"  said  the  patriotic 
Childe,  "but  Americains." 

"Amerique  du  Sud?"  queried  an  agent. 

"Non!"  shouted  the  Childe.  "Citoyens  des 
Etats-Unis!" 

•"Tiens!"  exclaimed  the  agent,  pointing  to 
our  prey;  "but  it  is  altogether  like  your 
Roosevelt,  fa."  And  he  wrote  diligently. 

Then  we  learnt,  under  the  policeman's 
questioning,  of  the  genesis  of  the  fray.  The 
heroic  Childe,  it  seemed,  on  reaching  the 
statue  of  La  Pucelle,  had  heard  a  cry  and 
saw  two  Apaches  pounce  on  an  old  gentle- 


102  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

man.  Reckless  of  odds,  he  had  clubbed  the 
villains  most  unscientifically,  until  one  fell 
and  the  other  ran  for  reinforcements.  Thus 
we  have  a  veridical  history  of  the  capture  of 
"Le  Rouge  Cabot"  by  Childe-Roland-to- 
the-dark-tower-came  Elliot. 

At  this  place,  marked  by  the  eclipse  of  the 
official  note-books,  I  insert  a  stage-direction, 
"Enter  the  villain."  My  own  whimsy  this 
phrase ;  not  a  guide-post  to  the  reader !  For 
albeit  I  have  eyed  him,  heard  him,  touched 
him,  traced  his  malign  effects,  yet  Cadwala- 
der  Bent  remains  for  me  a  filmy  phantom,  or 
(in  the  cant  of  the  critics)  unconvincing.  I 
cannot  make  him  real,  though  he  was, 
Heaven  knows,  real  enough  to  the  Infant. 

Even  his  voice,  when  I  heard  it  first,  was 
the  merest  metaphor — a  piece  of  velvet,  say, 
royal  purple  once,  but  stained  by  evil  use, 
faded  and  old. 

"And  to  whom,  fair  ladies,"  said  the  vel- 
vet drawl,  "am  I  to  be  grateful  for  the 
dubious  pleasure  of  being  still  alive?" 


LES    APACHES  103 

Betty  indicated  the  Childe. 

"My  plump  and  exiguous  saviour,"  con- 
tinued the  voice,  "accept  my  temperate 
thanks  for  the  undesirable  gift  of  vitality.  I 
am,  as  you  may  perhaps  find"^ — and  the 
voice's  owner  struggled  to  his  feet — "a  man 
that  always  pays,  some  day,  somehow,  both 
friends  and  enemies." 

A  sneering  white  face,  like  that  of  some 
mocking  courtier  of  Louis  Seize;  the  upper 
lip  marked  by  a  small,  grey,  excessively 
curled  moustache ;  the  eyelids  drooping  over 
filmy  eyes ;  the  form  meagre  and  graceful — 
such  was  the  man  that  took  the  Childe's 
hand. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "that  I  shall  mention 
you  favourably  in  my  prayers  tonight" — he 
laughed  hissingly.  "On  what  name,  my 
heroic  youth,  shall  I  crave  blessings  at  the 
throne  of  grace?" 

"My  name,"  said  the  Infant,  "is  Richard 
Elliot.  But— I  don't  want  to  be  rude,  of 
course — but,  if  it  is  quite  the  same  to  you, 


104  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

I'd  rather  be  excused  the  benefit  of  your 
prayers." 

The  old  gentleman  hissed  approvingly. 

"And  why?"  he  asked. 

"Not  sure  of  their  destination,"  answered 
Roland. 

"Excellent,"'  murmured  the  other;  "the 
gods,  who  are  nothing  if  not  ironic,  have 
shaped  us  for  friends.  So  prove  it,  subtle 
Mr.  Elliot,  by  finding  a  taxi  and  coming 
home  with  me.  I  am,  notwithstanding  the 
ministration  of  these  fair  and  virtuous  dam- 
sels, to  whom" — he  bowed  with  ceremony — 
"I  hereby  express  my  thanks,  somewhat 
shaken." 

"You  will  excuse  me,"  said  Roland  grave- 
ly to  the  girls,  "if  I  leave  you  and  assist 
Mr.  .  .  ." 

"Mr.  Bent,  Cadwalader  Bent,  and  your 
most  humble  servant,"  said  he. 

I  heard  Cyril,  who  stood  near  me,  swearing 
softly  and  continuously  after  this,  until,  one 
taxi  having  departed  with  the  Childe  and  the 


LES   APACHES  105 

unconvincing  Bent,  and  two  others  with  the 
agents  and  the  inefficient  Apaches,  we  con- 
tinued our  homeward  way. 

Then  Cyril  explained.  "Cadwalader  Bent 
is  my  father's  first  cousin;  and  (your  little 
pardon,  ladies!)  he  is  a  damned  rascal.  He 
and  I  are  the  only  living  descendants  of 
my  grandfather,  John  Harley.  Rich  tea 
merchant,  that  grandpa.  Said  to  have 
souchonged  and  oolonged  himself  into  a 
nervous  grave.  Somehow  (I  know  nothing 
of  law)  Cad  Bent  choused  my  dear  father — 
sweethearted  soul! — out  of  his  share  of  the 
tea-leaves.  So  my  father  and  mother  lived 
and  died  poor,  leaving  no  treasure  but  the 
son  that  is  I.  But  Cad  wasn't  after  the 
money  alone.  Something  behind!  Mother 
hinted  it  once.  Some  old,  devilish  hate  that 
made  Cad  gloat  over  their  poverty  and  let 
them  know  it.  I  wish,"  concluded  Cyril; 
and  he  seemed  sincere,  "that  the  Infant  had 
let  those  comparatively  virtuous  Apaches 
rid  the  world  of  Cad  Bent." 


VII 


A  VAGUE  VILLAIN 


"  T^NTREZ!"  said  a  weary  voice  when  I 
knocked  at  a  door  au  cinquieme,  39 
Rue  Bonaparte. 

It  was  a  bloodshot,  unshaven  Infant  that 
greeted  me,  an  Infant  in  an  Isabella  linen 
blouse  by  way  of  dressing  gown,  boiling 
water  over  a  tin  spirit  lamp  for  his  matutinal 
coffee. 

"Hail  hero!"  said  I. 

"Hero  indeed — I  wish  to  God  that  I 
hadn't  saved  that  old  rascal.  What  time  is 
it?" 

"Nearly  noon;  and  I  am  come,  O  valiant 
Roland,  to  offer  you  a  luncheon,  a  small 
feast  of  appreciation,  at — shall  we  say 
Voisins?" 

106 


A   VAGUE   VILLAIN         107 

"We  shall  indeed;  but  I  must  shave  first, 
though,"  he  said,  dipping  a  thermometric 
finger  in  the  hot  water. 

"You'll  be-nose  and  be-ear  yourself,  In- 
fant. See  your  fingers  twiddle?'* 

"I  don't  blame  them.  They  got  to  sleep 
at  five.  Bent  kept  me  up  for  nearly  three 
hours,  smoking  wonderful  perfectos  and 
drinking  assorted  lush." 

"He  also  appreciates — " 

"He  appreciates  nothing,"  cried  Roland, 
putting  soap  in  a  coffee  cup.  "I  never  in  my 
life  met  such  a  man.  Where's  my  shaving- 
brush?" 

After  a  long  search,  he  shouted,  "I  have 
it,"  and  pulled  it  out  of  a  shoe. 

"That's  a  mem'oria  technica,"  he  explained. 
"Just  as  I  was  dropping  off  to  sleep  last 
night  a  new  paint-theme  came  to  me,  a  dainty 
description  of  a  breeze  playing  in  Betty's 
hair.  So,  half  asleep,  I  dropped  the  brush 
in  the  shoe  to  remind  me.  Brush  suggests 
hair,  you  see.  Wait,  I'll  sketch  it." 


108  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"No,"  I  cried,  "you  shall  not.  You  are 
rather  hysteric.  Your  hysteria  will  get  into 
those  impish  fingers  of  yours.  I  know  you, 
Infant;  and  I  won't  look.  Shave! — or  no 
Voisin." 

He  prepared  the  lather. 

"And  define  your  Bent,"  I  added. 

"Clever  as  the  devil,  Hugh,  but  with  a 
sort  of  warp,  or  twist,  or  kink  in  his  nature. 
He  jolly  well  gave  me  the  woolies." 

As  his  round  eyes  were  all  I  could  see 
through  his  fleece  of  suds  the  slang  was  not 
inept. 

"Just  a  bad  man,"  I  suggested. 

"No,"  said  he,  producing,  much  to  my 
relief,  a  safety  razor;  "not  just  a  bad  man. 
Rather  a  man  that  likes  to  be  bad,  glories  in 
badness  and  doesn't  believe  in  goodness." 

"Curious,"  I  remarked,  "for  most  evil  do- 
ings disguise  themselves  as  high  moralities; 
witness  the  Inquisition,  the  burning  of 
Bruno,  the  Salem  witchcraft,  the — " 

"Witness  your  grandmother!"  he  inter- 


A   VAGUE    VILLAIN         109 

rupted,  scraping  vigourously.  "But  Cad- 
walader  Bent  has  no  such  self-deceptions 
(scrape).  He  is  a  damned  (scrape)  bad 
(scrape)  man  (scrape) !  And  he  knows  it!" 
^Scrape,  scrape.)  A  safety  razor,  it  may 
not  be  generally  known,  makes  a  potent  in- 
strument of  accompaniment  and  emphasis. 

"Then  Shakespeare  is  right  and  I  am 
wrong,"  said  I. 

"Not  impossible,"  he  agreed  dryly;  "but 
why?" 

"Because  I  have  always  held  that 
Richard's  'I  am  determined  to  prove  a  vil- 
lain' was  false  to  human  nature." 

"He  probably  knew  some  Elizabethan 
Bent,"  said  Roland. 

"Perhaps.  He  was,  judging  from  the 
sonnets,  a  man  of  some  experience.  But 
what  form  does  Bent's  evil  take,  Infant?" 

"A  satanic  je  ne  sals  quoi"  he  answered, 
washing  his  face;  "he  sneers  at  everything 
decent.  His  rooms  in  the  Boulevard  Male- 
sherbes  are  full  of  art  treasures;  and  he 


110  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

mocks  at  art.  His  shelves  are  full  of  rare 
books;  and  he  despises  literature." 

"Beast!" 

"Beast,"  agreed  Roland.  "La  Roche- 
foucauld seems  his  only  genuine  passion. 
He  has  the  editio  princeps  of  1665  and  every 
French  edition  since.  Or  so  he  said." 

"Well,  that  at  least  is  a  worthy  affection." 

"Not  at  all,"  he  contradicted;  "he  loves 
La  Rochefoucauld  because  of  his  deification 
of  self.  A  man,  said  Cad,  who  could  hold 
in  his  hand  all  the  threads  of  self  could  play 
with  the  world  like  a  puppet  show.  This  was 
towards  the  end  of  our  talk  and  he  spoke  as 
if  he  had  my  own  particular  thread  round  his 
little  finger.  Brrr — but  I  hate  that  man !" 

"But,  Childe,"  I  said  consolingly,  "after 
all,  you  need  not  see  him  again." 

"A  constant  eye,"  he  said  solemnly,  taking 
off  his  blouse;  "I  shall  have  to  keep  a  con- 
stant eye  on  the  old  sinner.  You'll  think  so 
too  before  I  finish.  Thus  far  you've  only  had 
the  bare  outline." 


A   VAGUE    VILLAIN         111 

As  his  plump  form,  the  blouse  removed, 
was  inadequately  attired  in  a  pair  of  carpet 
slippers,  I  could  not  help  saying: 

"The  bare  outline,  old  man,  rather  needs 
training  down  than  filling  out.  Shall  we 
give  up  Voisin?" 

"Jamais  de  la  vie!"  he  cried,  "I  was 
mighty  glad  of  my  solidity  last  night. 
Besides,  that  is  nothing  sillier  than  a  circular 
man  that  wants  to  be  an  angle  and  with  the 
angles  stand."  And  he  began  to  dress,  add- 
ing irrelevantly  as  he  did  so,  "I  washed  when 
I  got  up." 

"Hygienic  and  polite,"  I  agreed;  "more- 
over, according  to  Sir  Walter,  'the  rose  is 
sweetest  washed  with  morning  dew.'  But 
continue." 

"Well,  after  an  hour  of  rambling  talk  (he 
talks  well,  the  villain),  he  said  suddenly, 
'And  who  was  the  blue-eyed  nurse,  Mr. 
Elliot?'  " 

"How  did  he  know?"  I  asked. 

"By  her  touch,  he  said.  And  then  he  asked 


me  in  that  satiny,  Satanic  voice  of  his  whether 
she  returned  my  penchant  for  her." 

"He  has  eyes,  your  Mephisto." 

"But  how  did  he  guess?" 

"Because  you  also  have  eyes,  Infant." 

"Well?" 

"Barometric  eyes  that  show  what  the 
weather  is  in  your  soul." 

"Develop,  poetic  Hugh!  Knowing  your 
college  record  in  physics,  I  want  you  to  put 
sail  on  that  metaphor  till  it  wrecks  on  the 
reef  of  ignorance." 

"Barometric  eyes  ...  let  me  consider. 
There  is,  I  think,  a  vacuum  somewhere  in  a 
barometer,  probably  on  top.  Your  vacuum, 
Roland,  is  also  on  top." 

"Not  bad." 

"The  barometric  vacuum  is  a  mere  lack  of 
air;  the  Rolandic  vacuum  is  a  mere  lack  of 
Betty.  How  is  that  for  a  man  that  flunked 
physics  and  is  proud  of  it?" 

"Chouette!  But  go  on.  I  wait  the 
wreck." 


A   VAGUE    VILLAIN         113 

"Now  when  Betty  appears  she  makes 
halcyon  weather  in  your  heart — and — and — 
your  barometric  optics — glow  with  amorous 
idolatry." 

"Wrecked! — a  barometer  never  glows 
with  amorous  idolatry." 

"It  must,  Infant — such  a  mercurial  tem- 
perament! But  anyway,  jesting  apart,  it 
was  your  eyes  that  bewrayed  your  secret  to 
the  satanic  Bent.  What  did  you  say?" 

"I  denied  it,  of  course;  and  he  laughed 
that  hiss-hiss  laugh  he  affects." 

"And  then?" 

"And  then  he  asked  me  about  the  blond 
youngster,  meaning  Cyril.  His  voice 
changed ;  he  assumed  an  air  of  the  simplest, 
heartiest,  old-gentlemanly  interest.  'A 
young  architect;  ah!  the  noble  career.  Poor? 
—that  doesn't  matter;  he  will  work  the 
harder  and  aim  the  higher.  Industrious? 
Clever?  Virtuous?  Excellent! — just  what 
I  would  wish  a  boy,  if  I  had  one,  to  be!' 
Well,  Hugh,  I  rather  thawed  under  this 


114  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

change  of  manner  (he  is  a  clever  devil)  and 
told  him  all  I  knew  about  old  Cyril.  When 
I  finished,  Cad  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and 
hissed  like  a  serpent,  'Cyril  Harley!'  said 
he,  'Cyril  Harley.'  I  had  not  mentioned 
Cyril's  name  to  him." 

"Cyril  told  me  that  Cad  is  his  first  cousin," 
I  observed,  "once  removed." 

"I  wish,"  cried  he  violently,  "that  he  were 
once  removed  to" — mentioning  an  obsoles- 
cent country  that  not  fifty  years  ago  ranked 
as  a  First  Class  Power  and  is  now  reduced  to 
the  grade  of  a  mere  Buffer  State. 

"Infant,"  I  said,  "permit  me  to  suggest 
that  your  profane  explosions  and  alleged 
jeux  d'esprit  destroy  the  constructive  ele- 
ments of  your  tale.  I  get  an  uneasy  sense 
that  there  is  a  cloudy  menace  about  Cadwal- 
ader  Bent,  but  no  act  or  word  on  which  to 
predicate  it.  You  open  a  door,  roar  'Enter 
the  villain,'  and  no  villain  appears." 

"That  is  all  I  get  myself — just  a  vague 
fear." 


A   VAGUE    VILLAIN         115 

"But,  Infant,  what  did  he  say  or  do  ?  You 
are  like  certain  novelists  that  laboriously  de- 
scribe the  souls  of  their  dramatis  personae, 
their  vices,  virtues,  penchants,  springs  of 
action,  and  never  worry  about  their  words 
or  actions  afterwards.  What  did  Bent  say 
or  do?" 

"I  can't  remember  every  blessed  word  of  a 
three-hour  talk,  Mr.  Realist." 

"Stop! — I  am  an  Idealist,  thou  slanderer." 

"You  would  be  something  with  a  big  I 
in  it,"  he  retorted.  "But  whatever  you  may 
be,  Cadwalader  Bent  is  dangerous  in  himself 
and  dangerous  to  Cyril." 

" Search  your  memory,  old  man,  for  little 
diagnostic  facts.  You  said,  for  example, 
that  Bent  hissed  and  laughed  and  repeated 
Cyril's  name.  That's  what  I  want,  little  in- 
dicative facts." 

"Then  be  thankful  for  what  you  get — ah! 
that  reminds  me  of  something  he  said  about 
gratitude.  'You  saved  my  life/  said  Bent, 


116  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

'and,  therefore,  by  all  the  rules  you  should 
like  me  better  than  I  like  you.' ' 

"La  Rochefoucauld,"  I  remarked. 

"Probably.  Then  Bent  proceeded  to  con- 
tradict his  maxim.  'But  in  our  case,'  said 
he,  'I  like  you  better  than  you  like  me.  Why? 
Because  there  is  even  a  sweeter  passion  than 
self-esteem — hate!  Moreover,  you  embody 
an  idea  that  has  long  been  in  my  mind.  You 
are  poor ;  therefore  you  can  be  bought.  You 
are  virtuous;  therefore  will  become  a  hypo- 
crite. You  are  a  loyal  friend  in  poverty; 
therefore  you  will  become  a  secret  enemy  in 
wealth.  You  will  serve  my  ends,  Roland 
Elliot;  so  I  like  you.'" 

"What  was  the  reply  of  Roland  Elliot?" 

"I  got  angry  and  told  him  that  if  he  were 
younger  I'd  punch  his  head." 

"And  he?" 

"Hissed,  damn  him;  simply  grinned  and 
hissed,"  said  the  Infant,  with  an  emphasis 
that  broke  a  shoe-string.  "There  it  goes 
again.  I'll  use  Cyril's  initiation  lace" — 


A   VAGUE   VILLAIN         117 

which  he  proceeded  to  do — "and,  speaking  of 
Cyril,  what  does  'intestate'  mean?" 

"In,  not;  testari,  to  make  a  will,"  I  an- 
swered. 

"I  thought  so.  Bent  remarked  that  he 
was  worth  half  a  million.  His  exchequer 
didn't  interest  me;  so  I  grunted;  and  he 
made  about  fifty  smoke-rings  by  way  of 
marking  time.  Then,  before  I  left,  he  said, 
'If  I  should  die  intestate  Cyril  Harley  would 
get  that  half  million.'  And  hissed.  'But  I 
won't  die  intestate.'  And  hissed  again. 

"It's  no  use,  Infant,"  said  I.  "Bent  rests 
nebulous.  He's  not  real.  No  real  villain 
would  confide  such  things  to  a  perfect 
stranger.  Bent  is  utterly  unconvincing." 

"You  act  as  if  he  were  a  character  in  a 
story.  He  isn't ! — and  he's  a  very  real  piece 
of  villainy.  He's  weaving  a  web,  and  these 
sayings  of  his  are  threads  in  it.  An  infernal 
web.  Why,  when  we  parted,  he  took  me  by 
the  hand  and  said:  'No,  Roland  Elliot,  I 
shall  not  die  intestate  now/  And  I  heard 


118  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

that  hiss-hiss  follow  me  all  the  way  down 
stairs  till  I  cried  Cordon!  to  the  concierge." 

"Unconvincing,"  I  grumbled;  "but  per- 
haps he  will  make  you  his  heir." 

"Then  I'll  give  the  money  to  Cyril,"  he 
said  stoutly,  adding  with  a  sigh,  "and  dear 
Betty." 

Poor  old  Infant;  always  that  fly  in  the 
milk! 

"And  now  you  see,"  he  concluded,  "why  I 
must  watch  Bent.  Je  suis  la,  moi!  and  he 
shall  not  hurt  Cyril." 

And  he  clapped  on  his  hat  fiercely  and 
shook  a  round  white  fist  Bent- ward. 

"Bravo!  and  may  Voisin  give  you  strength 
for  the  battle.  Personally,  though,  I  am  en- 
thusiastic about  Bent.  We  needed  him.  We 
were  undramatic  Little  Ones,  content  with 
our  toys  of  art  and  words  and  thought. 
Now,  it  is  'Enter  the  giant  Blunderbore.' 
By  the  way,  shall  you  tell  Cyril?" 

"What  do  you  think?" 


A   VAGUE    VILLAIN         119 

"I  think  not.  We'll  make  it  our  affair,  the 
business  of  Roland  and  Hugh,  limited." 

"Good!  It's  our  affair,"  said  the  Childe, 
as  he  locked  his  door. 


VIII 

LOVE 

"TTAPPY  days!"  I  began— if  I  could 
not  talk  with  Pruina  I  could  at  least 
read  my  own  work  to  her.  "Happy  days! 
and,  what  is  so  sadly  rare,  days  that  were 
conscious  of  their  own  happiness.  The  eyes 
of  life  are  presbyopic;  youth  looks  forward 
to  manhood,  age  looks  back  to  youth,  with 
the  same  clear  vision  and  the  same  panting 
desire.  'Fulfilment  waits  there/  cries  the 
one;  'Heaven  was  there,'  croaks  the  other; 
and  neither  sees,  because  of  this  focal  defect, 
that  heaven  and  fulfilment,  exquisite  and 
vital,  are  forever  dancing  together  on  the 
indivisible  mote  we  call  the  present." 

Pruina's  eyes,  visioning  into  the  stirring 


120 


LOVE  121 

leafage  beyond  the  Colonne  des  Baisers, 
turned  for  one  assenting  instant  to  mine. 

"Platitudes?"  I  continued.  "Yes;  and  of 
the  flattest.  And  greatly  said  heretofore  by 
great  masters  of  verse  and  prose;  and  in- 
geniously diluted,  with  much  edifying  mar- 
gent,  by  watery  commentators.  But  after 
all,  be  this  said  in  its  behalf,  is  it  not  the  very 
flatness  of  a  platitude  that  makes  it  so 
favourite  a  promenade  for  indolent  or  gouty 
souls  ?  The  old  sun  shines  there ;  the  place  is 
much  frequented;  the  atrophied  climbing 
muscles  feel  no  ache;  and  even  a  palsied 
creed,  in  its  bath  chair,  may  continue  its  far 
niente.  There  is  much  repose  in  a  platitude. 

"Even  the  Book— " 

"I  see,"  said  Pruina;  "you  are  writing  of 
the  present  as  if  it  were  already  auld  lang 
syne." 

"Gold,"  I  stammered  (the  sun,  that  rare 
old  placer-miner,  was  panning  out  the  treas- 
ure of  her  hair) — "gold  glisters  brightest  in 
the  gray  years." 


122  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Even  the  Book  itself,"  I  continued,  to 
avoid  further  idiocies,  "is  not  all  snow  peaks. 
There  are  levels.  'The  lens  of  life'  it  says 
with  charming  gallicism,  ris  of  a  dimpleness!' 
— a  saying  that  the  Little  Ones  played  with 
merrily  in  the  Nursery.  Roland,  the  rascal, 
treated  the  thing  lightly.  And  he  our 
hierophant!  'Man  first  sees  life,'  he  para- 
phrased, 'when  he  notices  a  dimple.'  I 
joined  the  others,  of  course,  in  chiding  him 
for  his  frivolity  (I  had  almost  said,  pro- 
fanity) buW 

"But  what?"  asked  Pruina;  for  I  hesi- 
tated. 

"What  follows,"  said  I,  "is  irrelevant,  a 
mere  personal  comment  on  the  Infant's  fool- 
ishness." 

In  my  heart  I  agreed  with  him;  for 
Pruina,  as  well  as  Betty,  has  very  desirable 
dimples. 

"Pruina,"  I  read,  skipping  some  lines, 
"who  loves  the  widest  effects  of  light  and 
colour,  saw  a  misprint,  or  a  misfrost,  in  the 


LOVE  123 

Book.  'The  lens  of  life  (and  the  real  lens 
of  life  is  art),'  she  corrected,  'is  of  a  simple- 
ness.'  But  the  last  word  was  cried  down  as 
a  hybrid;  and  I  dared  not  bring  Shake- 
speare to  its  defense.  We  permitted  no  fetich 
worship.  Little  Will  was  of  our  guild,  loved 
and  quoted  (as  such  should  ever  be)  in  love 
and  not  as  authority.  Indeed  all  the  gently 
great  or  greatly  gentle  were  on  our  muster- 
roll;  Spinoza  (Little  Baruch),  for  example, 
was  there;  and  there,  too,  was  Elia,  the  be- 
loved." 

'The  lens  of  life  is  of  a  dimpleness,"  said 
Cyril,  "means  nothing  whatever" ;  and  I,  be- 
cause I  was  somewhat  disconcerted,  agreed 
with  Cyril. 

"Why  were  you  disconcerted?"  asked 
Pruina. 

"By  a  propinquous  glamour,"  said  I,  and 
read  on  hastily. 

"Then  Aloys,  smiling  benignly  on  our 
juvenilities,  took  up  the  tale.  'Dimpleness 
means  concavity,'  said  he;  'the  lens  of  life  is 


124  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

concave.     Do  any  of  your  children  know 
anything  of  optics?' 

None  knew  anything  of  optics. 

'Then  I  may  venture,  without  fear  of 
scientific  contradiction,  to  expand  the  meta- 
phor thus.  As  man  looks  forward  and  back 
through  the  diminishing  lens  of  life,  all  seems 
(as  in  a  Claude  Loraine  glass)  fairer,  com- 
pacter,  more  pictorial,  than  the  gross  objects 
within  instant  touch.  The  Book  states, 
rather  vaguely  I  confess,  a  vulgar  error. 
Judging  from  the  lightness  of  the  phrase,  I 
should  call  it  ironic.' ' 

"The  Little  Ones  accepted  both  exegesis 
and  comment;  and  their  acceptance  brings 
me  round  again  to  the  commonplace  that  be- 
gins the  essay. 

"For  it  is  false,  this  commonplace!  Yeasty 
To-come  (fuming  with  germination)  and 
fusty  Has-been  (high  as  an  epicure's  game) 
smell  sweeter  in  your  nostrils,  do  they,  Mr. 
Moralist,  than  the  fugitive  whiffs  from  the 
garden  of  the  Now?  Poor  Grown-up! — it 


LOVE  125 

would  not  be  so  were  you  a  Little  One  living 
on  the  surface  of  Paris.  No;  you  would 
exult  (ah!  with  what  innocent  exultation) 
that  you  were  alive,  that  Paris  was  alive, 
and  that  the  filmy  Now  played  like  an 
iridescence  between  you." 

"I  love  that,"  said  Pruina,  with  sympa- 
thetic underlining  of  the  emotional  verb.  I 
bowed  my  thanks.  I  also  love  that. 

"I  said,"  my  reading  continued,  "that  the 
Little  Ones  lived  on  the  surface  of  Paris. 
It  is  a  lamping  phrase.  It  lights  the  Little 
Ones,  their  characters,  deeds,  aspirations, 
and  the  angle  from  which  they  gazed  on  life." 

"A  lamping  phrase,"  echoed  that  dear 
Pruina. 

"The  Englishman,"  I  read  on,  "makes  a 
religion  of  anything  he  likes  very  much  to 
do;  the  Frenchman  makes  an  art  of  it;  and 
the  American  a  business." 

"That  sounds  rather  smart,"  said  Pruina 
doubtfully. 

"It  is  disgustingly  smart,"  I  agreed,  "but 


126  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

it  is  as  true  as  most  aphorisms.  Listen  to 
its  application." 

"But  the  Little  Ones  made  neither  a  re- 
ligion, an  art  nor  a  business  of  the  things 
(how  many?)  that  they  liked  very  much  to 
do.  They  nonchalantly  did  them;  did  them 
gaily,  earnestly,  always  conscious  of  the 
aroma  of  the  fragrant  Now,  always  rejoic- 
ing in  the  surface  of  Paris. 

"That  shining  surface!  Below  it  in  the 
dark  ocean  no  doubt  were  the  slow  writhings 
of  evolving  life  and  the  petulant  leaps  of 
nervous  egoism.  But  we  knew  nothing,  we 
sea-gulls  afloat,  of  the  motions  in  the  deep. 

"Or  say  (to  change  the  image)  that  we 
dwelt  in  the  iridescence  of  a  bubble.  We 
played  eagerly  amid  the  filmy  nothings  of 
the  arts,  the  melodious  colour,  the  informing 
music,  the  chiseled  phrase,  the  glowing 
marble.  Played,  too,  how  earnestly!  in  the 
rainbow  spectrum  of  human  thought,  rang- 
ing freely  from  ultra-violet  to  ultra-red, 
rays  visible  and  invisible.  We  recked  not  of 


LOVE  127 

the  hollow  fluid  sphere  we  lived  on,  blown 
into  form  by  the  vague  afflatus  we  called  La 
France. 

"Perhaps,  had  we  turned  microscopic  eyes 
downwards,  we  should  have  seen  swarming 
life,  the  rod-like  bacilli  of  the  law,  the  whirl- 
ing rotifera  of  fashion,  political  and  military 
microbes  and  other  pathogenic  creatures. 
But  we  looked  not  down.  The  iridescence 
fulfilled  our  vision." 

It  was  not  iridescence,  though,  that  ful- 
filled my  vision.  It  was  gold,  a  warm, 
breathing,  aureate  glow  which,  centered  in 
Pruina,  touched  the  pleasant  lawns,  the 
bright  parterres,  the  dark  boscage  and  the 
fluttering  tree-tops  with  the  consciousness 
that  She  was  there.  Until  this  moment  I 
had  kept  the  glow  off  my  manuscript  by  a 
blind  effort  of  the  will ;  but  now — ah !  it  was 
striding  up  through  the  written  words  and 
my  eyes  drank  it  in  like  an  opiate.  One 
effort  morel 

"Yet  we  sometimes  left  the  surface,"  I 


128  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

read.  "Of  the  breath  that  filled  our  bubble 
we  knew  something  and  ever  sought  to  know 
more.  It  is  an  honest  breath  out  of  deep 
lungs,  the  bourgeois  breath  of  the  French 
people.  Garlic? — yes;  a  little,  and  good  red 
Bordeaux  besides;  and  all  the  healthier  for 
it.  It  smells,  too,  of  the  salt  sea,  the  tilled 
fields  and  the  pines  of  the  Vosges.  It  is  the 
sustaining  breath  of  France.  Puffing  the 
hollow,  mobile  film  of  the  State  (inhabited 
microscopically  as  aforesaid)  into  a  perfect 
sphere,  it  creates  by  warm  pressure  from 
within  the  iridescence  on  the  surface  without. 
What  wonder  if  the  Little  Ones  loved  this 
afflatus?" 

She  is  there,  beside  me,  Pruina!  Pruina! 
— Gold!  Gold! — Shall  I  speak  now,  saying 
I  know  not  what? — Is  it  love? — Has  it 
passed  from  the  region  of  hypothesis? — Shall 
I  speak? — Read,  fool,  read! 

"I  should  be  proud  of  that  image,  were  it 
mine,"  I  read;  "but  alas!  it  is  not  mine. 
'Life?'  inquires  the  Book,  'Life  a  bubble? 


LOVE  129 

Then  catch  its  opalescence,  breathe  its  breath 
and  —  don't  get  wet!'  Adapted  to  our 
parochial  purposes,  it  explains  the  joy  of  the 
Little  Ones  in  Paris." 

She  is  there,  beside  me,  Love!  Love — 
Nothing  hypothetic  now. — It  is  fact,  winged 
and  lyric,  blond  in  the  blond  sunshine. — I 
shall  speak,  forthright,  without  eloquence, 
saying  simply,  "Pruina,  I  love  you — " 

I  turn  to  her — 

I  hear  a  cheery  greeting — 

There,  coming  along  the  walk,  was  a  glint 
of  brown  and  sparkle,  checked  blue  and 
white  linen  borne  on  springing  steps. 

I  like  Little  Betty- 

But  now— 

Absolutely  antiseptic! 


IX 

THE  RESCUE 

;<TAO  I  interpose  between  the  questing 

brain  and  the  elusive  word?"  queried 

Roland,  breaking  in  on  my  Garden  solitude. 

"You  come  between  an  egregious  ass  and 
his  stinking  fodder,"  I  answered  in  disgust. 
"Listen,  if  you  please,  to  this  scintillating 
sunset  trope:  'The  sky  behind  was  a  grey- 
blue,  as  if  cigarette  smoke  had  been  blown 
through  the  bright  hair  of  the  tangled 
clouds.'  What  do  you  think  of  that  ?" 

"Poor  old  Hugh!  Did  you  really,  in  a 
lucid,  waking  moment,  mix  that  hogwash?" 

"I,  or  the  scribbling  devil  that  possesses 
me." 

"And  whose,  if  I  may  venture  into  the 

130 


THE    RESCUE  131 

penetralia  of  the  artistic  soul,  was  the  bright 
hair  of  your  windy  metaphor?" 

"It  was  hair  in  the  abstract,"  I  answered 
evasively.  "Do  you  suppose  that  Milton  was 
thinking  of  some  girl  when  he  wrote  'the 
loose  train  of  thy  amber-dropping  hair'?" 

"I  do,  and  also  that  thou  art  a  liar,  O 
Hugh." 

"I  am  verity  incarnate,"  I  answered ;  "and, 
to  change  the  subject,  I  wonder  how  an 
ordinary  human  man  ever  captures  a  phrase 
like  that.  'Thy  amber-dropping  hair!'  How 
did  Milton  do  it?" 

"Not  by  smoking  cigarettes  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg Garden  and  dreaming  inanities,"  he 
said.  "No;  he  went  forth  into  the  shouting 
world;  he  got  in  touch  with  the  living  con- 
crete. That's  what  you  need,  old  man,  the 
living  concrete.  Now,  there  is  nothing  so 
intensely  living,  so  obstinately  concrete,  as  a 
dog.  Hence,  logically,  you  must  go  to  the 
dogs  for  salvation." 

"Metaphorically?"  I  asked. 


132  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Most  literally,"  he  answered.  "I,  as  high 
priest  of  the  Little  Ones,  do  command  thee 
to  expiate  thy  abominable  trope  by  going 
(as  I  am  going)  to  the  dogs." 

"Interpret,  Mr.  Sphinx." 

"I  am  on  my  way  to  see  the  dogs  clipped 
and  washed  at  the  Pont  de  Solferino.  I  am 
fond  of  dogs." 

I  peered  steadily  at  the  Childe  through  the 
pinched  eyelids  of  just  suspicion. 

He  grew  pink. 

"Infant,"  I  said,  "thou  also  art  a  liar." 

"I  love  dogs,"  said  he. 

"Where,"  I  thundered,  "is  Betty  Brown 
this  morning?" 

"The  dog  is  the  friend  of  man,"  he  said,  "a 
most  noble  creature.  Think  of  Ulysses  and 
Argos.  Think  of  the  Seven  Sleepers  and 
Katmir— " 

"Think  of  Punch  and  Toby,"  I  inter- 
rupted. "Where  is  Betty  Brown  this  morn- 
ing?" 


THE    RESCUE  133 

'I  am  neither  prophet  nor  the  son  of  a 
prophet." 

"Is  she  etching  under  the  Pont  Royal?" 

"She  is  generally  etching  something  some- 
where when  she  is  not  nursing  someone  some 
otherwhere." 

"Don't  you  know?" 

"Who  am  I  to  aspire  to  know?  Knowl- 
edge, says  Tennyson,  is  the  swallow  on  the 
lake.  Yet  a  little  bird  (not  the  Tennysonian 
swallow)  has  whispered  in  my  ear  that  if  by 
any  chance  she  should  be  etching  under  the 
Pont  Royal,  Miss  Bright  Hair  would  be 
with  her." 

"Suppose,"  I  said,  pocketing  my  manu- 
script, "that  we  go  to  the  dogs  together." 

The  Infant  bestowed  on  me  the  nodding 
smile  of  fellow-feeling.  Yet  he  did  not 
know,  from  me  at  least,  that  my  affection  had 
passed  beyond  the  stage  of  hypothesis.  Some 
things  are  sweeter  unspoken.  Delicate  reser- 
vations form  a  flowering  hedge  between 
friendships. 


134  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

We  found  the  tondeur  of  the  Pont  de 
Solferino  plying  his  clippers  on  the  pelt  of 
a  morose  and  diminishing  poodle.  A  patch 
of  felted  hair  grew  on  the  cobbles  of  the  qual, 
and  as  it  waxed  so  did  that  poodle  wane  in 
bulk  and  self-respect.  No  wonder! — he  came 
to  that  place  of  metamorphoses  a  saucy  dog 
and  would  depart  the  ridiculous  travesty  of 
a  lion.  And  he  knew  it.  Also  he  would  be 
washed,  washed  wriggling  in  the  cold  Seine, 
with  soap  in  his  eyes  and  every  circumstance 
of  publicity  and  indignity.  Pauvre  Loulou! 

"There,  Mr.  Author,"  said  the  Childe,  "is 
an  instructive  metaphor  for  you.  You  are 
now  an  honest  dog,  a  rollicking,  rat-hunting, 
bone-burying  tike.  Suppose  you  should 
finish  your  book;  suppose  you  should  find  a 
weak-minded  publisher;  suppose  you  should 
become  a  best-seller;  suppose  the  publicity 
man  should  deem  it  meet  to  flaunt  your 
name,  your  book  and  your  physiognomy  in 
the  trolley  cars  of  New  York,  guarded  by  a 
hair  restorer  on  the  one  side  and  a  breakfast 


THE    RESCUE  135 

food  on  the  other;  suppose  that  reading 
notices,  intimate  ones,  should  appear,  telling 
how  Hugh  Lyddon,  author  of  'The  Pearl 
and  the  Swine,'  now  in  its  blanky-blankth 
thousand,  always  eats  with  his  knife  o'  Sun- 
days to  remind  him  of  his  old  farm  days  in 
New  England;  suppose — " 

"Shut  up,  old  ass,"  I  pleaded. 

"Why?  When  I  am  discoursing  on  the 
sacred  theme  of  literature." 

"Literature!"  I  ejaculated. 

"Of  course,  literature! — the  sort  that  is 
literally  littered  all  over  the  public  sty. 
Well,  suppose  all  these  supposes,  and  what 
becomes  of  Master  Hugh  Lyddon?  He  be- 
comes a  tiny  caricature  of  a  lion,  clipped  by 
the  critics,  exploited  by  the  publicity  man, 
shivering  in  the  ungenial  atmosphere  of  the 
market.  No  more  buried  bones  for  him ;  he 
must  gnaw  them  in  reading-notices.  No 
more  rat-huntings,  unless  he  is  photographed 
in  the  act.  He  must  always  be  washed,  al- 
ways have  soap  in  his  eyes,  always — " 


136  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Childe,"  I  cried,  "you  forget  that  I  am 
a  Little  One.  The  diseases  you  described 
afflict  only  the  grown-up  world." 

He  patted  my  shoulder. 

"Pray  against  temptation,"  said  he.  "But, 
speaking  of  Little  Ones,  I  fancy  that  your 
weird  foreshadowing  of  the  whereabouts  of 
Betty  Brown  was  veridical.  I  chanced,  in 
looking  up  the  river,  to  observe  two  dots  of 
colour  near  the  Pont  Royal." 

"I  also,"  I  admitted,  "chanced  to  notice 
something  of  the  kind.  What  an  occult 
coincidence!" 

"Mysterious!  But  a  thought,  the  out- 
growth of  my  love  of  truth  and  the  scientific 
method,  occurs  to  me.  We  should  examine 
those  dots  of  colour  more  proximately." 

"I  care  not  a  jot  or  a  tittle  for  the  scien- 
tific method,"  said  I;  "but  I  love  truth  with 
the  marrow  of  my  soul.  Let  us  approximate, 
Childe,  or  in  the  vernacular  draw  nigh  to 
yonder  chromatic  splotches." 

"If    distance    lends    enchantment,"    re- 


THE    RESCUE  137 

marked  Roland,  as  we  descended  the  steps 
and  walked  along  the  quai,  "will  nearness 
borrow  disenchantment,  that's  the  question? 
What  do  you  think?" 

"The  enchantment  appears  to  me  to  in- 
crease; but  it  may  be  a  subjective  delusion. 
How  is  it  with  you?" 

"It  increases  like  the  force  of  gravity, 
inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance. 
Extraordinary  how  one  simple  law  runs 
through  all  nature !  Now  if  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton and  his  apple  were  here — " 

"I  should  find  him  de  trop"  said  I. 

"Maybe;  but  he  was  a  glorious  Little 
One.  Greeting  to  your  power,  petites!" 

This  to  the  girls. 

"And  to  your  work,  petits"  answered 
Betty;  "though  I  am  grieved" — the  words 
came  like  an  antiseptic  spray — "to  see  no 
indication  of  work  about  either  of  you.  You 
are  simply  demoralizing  flaneurs'9 

Pruina  nodded  golden  assent. 

"Work,"  said  the  Infant  loftily,  address- 


138  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

ing  Pruina,  "thrives  not  only  by  working. 
You  know  what  the  Bhagavad-Gita  says?" 

They  did  not  know. 

'  'He  who  may  behold,' '  quoted  the 
Childe,  "  'as  it  were,  inaction  in  action,  and 
action  in  inaction,  is  wise  amongst  mankind.' 
Now,  Little  Hugh  and  I,  simple  as  we  stand 
before  you,  have  learnt  to  behold  action  in 
inaction." 

"And  therefore,"  said  Pruina,  "you  and 
he—" 

"Modesty  forbids  that  I  should  chase  the 
rabbit  of  logic  into  the  burrow  of  vainglory. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  Little  Hugh  and  I  were 
wrapt  on  high  matters ;  like  the  gentlemen  in 
Milton,  we 

"  ' — reasoned  high. 

"  'Of  providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate 
"  'Fixed  fate,  free  will,   foreknowledge  absolute; 
"  'And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost.'  " 

"A  moment  ago,"  remarked  Betty  to 
Pruina,  in  an  awestruck  whisper,  "they  were 


THE   RESCUE  139 

only  wise  among  mankind;  now  they  are 
fallen  angels." 

"And  as  such,"  said  the  Childe  sadly,  "un- 
meet for  angelic  society.  Come,  Little 
Hugh." 

He  raised  his  hat  with  the  sweeping  ges- 
ture of  Cyrano,  took  my  arm  and  led  me  to 
the  edge  of  the  river. 

"But  we  won't  go  far,"  he  murmured; 
"we'll  sit  here  in  plain  sight  and  make  our 
backs  look  as  discontented  as  possible." 

"Discontented  backs."  As  we  sat  on  the 
shelving  cobbles,  feet  almost  touching  the 
water,  knees  drawn  up  under  our  chins,  I 
found  myself  laughing  at  the  phrase. 

"Don't  laugh,"  said  Roland.  "Your 
whole  future  may  depend  on  the  curve  of 
your  backbone.  Make  it  express,  as  I  am 
doing,  a  chastened  loneliness,  an  immense 
yearning.  Since  you  are  the  highest  of  ver- 
tebrates, make  your  vertebrae  mean  unutter- 
able things.  Think  of  the  bones  of  the 
dinosaur  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  and 


140  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

how  his  back  seems  to  be  carrying  an  aeonian, 
prehistoric  solitude.  That's  the  effect  you 
should  aim  at.  And,  speaking  of  effects, 
how  did  I  get  on  this  time?" 

"Much  better.  You  were  almost  your 
natural  self.  And  how  did  I  get  on?" 

"You  did  not  say  a  word." 

"I  did  not  say  a  word?" 

"Not  a  single  monosyllable,  my  poor  old 
Hugh.  How  did  you  like  my  Bhagavad?" 

"Chouette!  And  I  really  did  not  utter  a 
word?" 

"Not  one;  but  you  looked  whole  tomes  of 
effable  eloquence.  What  did  you  think  of 
my  Milton?" 

"Apt  enough;  but  somewhat  demode. 
Poor  old  Milton!  he  has  become  one  huge 
'light  fantastic  toe'  nowadays.  Such  is 
fame." 

"His  only  claim  to  Littleoneness,"  com- 
mented the  Infant.  "Did  I  phrase  my 
thoughts  well?" 


THE    RESCUE  141 

"Excellently — to  Pruina.  You  did  not 
speak  to  Betty." 

"I  did  not  speak  to  Betty?" 

"Not  the  smallest  Indo-Germanic  root, 
my  poor  old  Childe." 

"What  a  fool  I  am!" 

"No;  what  a  Little  One  you  are!  And, 
speaking  of  Little  Ones,  does  love  affect 
grown-ups  as  ridiculously  as  it  does  you  and 
me?" 

"I  think  not,"  he  answered,  "their  habits 
of  thought  protect  them  from  our  perturba- 
tions. As  far  as  I  have  observed,  they  calmly 
study  what  they  call  the  Opposite  Sex — " 

"An  undainty  phrase!" 

"Say  rancid! — find  someone  who  is  Mar- 
riageable— " 

"An  insipid  epithet!" 

"Say  mawkish!  and  marry  her." 

"Ah,  they  marry  her,"  I  repeated,  judi- 
cially considering  this  vagary  of  the  grown- 
up world,  "I  had  not  thought  of  that,  at 
least  as  it  might  affect  me.  I  have  played 


142  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

with  the  hypothesis  of  love,  but  not  with  the 
hypothesis  of  marriage.  Have  you?" 

"Never!"  he  exclaimed,  his  eyes  mere 
circles  of  denial.  "I  have  sometimes  thought 
that  I  should  like  to  kiss  the  feet  of  Betty 
Brown,  though  I  should  probably  die  of  the 
joy  of  it." 

"And  I,"  I  confessed,  "have  sometimes 
dreamed  of  kissing  a  hand;  and  the  mere 
dream  is  almost  fatal." 

"Poor  old  Hugh." 

"Poor  old  Childe." 

At  this  moment  there  was  a  shout  from 
Pruina. 

"Hugh!  Hugh!  Come  quickly,"  she  cried. 

I  went  quickly. 

"That  man,"  she  said,  pointing  at  a  re- 
treating figure,  "has  been  annoying  us!" 

I  gave  chase,  caught  the  rascal  (a  mere 
crumbling  wisp  of  a  man)  and,  because  he 
was  too  small  to  thrash,  threw  him  into  the 
Seine.  He  sank,  came  up,  yelped  horribly, 
whirled  off  in  the  eddies,  projected  his  fool- 


THE    RESCUE  143 

ish  arms  with  a  gurgling  cry  and  sank 
again. 

It  was  high  time  to  act.  I  did  not  want 
his  corpse,  a  bloated  accusation,  to  reappear 
in  the  Morgue.  So  I  splashed  in.  As  the 
river  was  low  (say  two  metres  fifty  at  the 
Pont  Royal) ,  the  water  was  fairly  clear  and 
I  was  able  to  find  him  soon  after  his  third 
eclipse.  Found,  he  became  a  sea-thing  all 
terror  and  tentacles;  and  I  had  to  spend 
more  than  the  usual  time  undei  water  before 
his  grip  relaxed.  By  the  time  this  happened 
and  I  was  able  to  tow  him  ashore,  we  had 
been  swept  down  to  the  Pont  de  Solferino, 
where  we  were  received  by  the  joyous  yelp- 
ings of  the  released  and  naked  poodle  and 
the  assisting  hands  of  the  Little  Ones. 

I  did  not  see  clearly  all  that  followed ;  but 
it  is  described  in  any  treatise  on  "Aid  to  the 
Apparently  Drowned."  I  had  only  a  dizzy 
vision  of  the  Childe  tilting  and  squeezing  the 
water  out  of  a  limp  and  dripping  rascal,  and 
of  Betty  dragging  at  an  elongated  red 


144  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

tongue  with  a  handkerchief.  Such  an  effi- 
cient Bettine!  And  there  was  much  pump- 
ing of  arms  and  kneading  of  ribs  before 
Pruina  (bless  her!)  came  back  with  the 
brandy.  Then  I  felt  much  better,  for  my 
part,  and  admired  the  rhythmic  vigour  of  the 
pumping  and  the  kneading,  and  Betty'j  un- 
relaxing  grasp  of  the  extruded  tongue.  I 
even  found  breath  to  cheer  them  on  and  to 
gasp  a  faint  hurrah  when  they  shouted  "He 
is  breathing."  Just  then  arrived  the  men 
from  the  "Secours  aux  Noyes"  and  an  agent 
with  his  note  book.  Thus,  with  the  making  of 
the  official  record  (silent  as  to  the  rascal's 
entry  into  the  river)  ended  the  adventure. 

"Little  Pruina,"  remarked  the  Childe,  as 
we  wandered  homeward,  "I  trust  you  now 
behold,  as  it  were — " 

"As  it  were,"  repeated  Betty;  for  he  was 
looking  at  her. 

"As  it  were,  inaction  in  action,  and  action 
in  inaction." 

"As  it  were,"  agreed  Betty  kindly. 


THE    RESCUE  145 

I  looked  at  Pruina  (ah,  love,  there  is  now 
no  hypothesis!)  and  knocked  timidly,  my 
foolish  heart  keeping  time,  on  the  gate  of 
interrogation. 

"As  it  were?"  murmured  I. 

And  I  heard  the  golden  affirmative, 
sounding  in  my  ears  like  a  shy,  far  trumpet 
of  capitulation — 

"As  it  were,"  said  Pruina,  her  dear  eyes 
to  mine. 


BEAMY  JIMMY 

"T>  L.  S.,  in  the  epilogue  to  "The  Wreck- 
er,"  writes  of  "dead  leaves  from  the 
Bas  Breau."  Unconsumed  and  unmouldered, 
they  gather  there  year  by  year,  fallen  from 
the  great  trees  that  Rousseau  loved  to  paint. 
Smokers  are  besought,  in  politest  French,  to 
be  watchful  over  the  fiery  instruments  of 
their  pleasure ;  and  one  is  sure,  as  one  settles 
into  that  couch,  that  they  have  been  politely 
watchful  from  generation  to  generation. 

Upon  those  leaves,  not  far  from  Barbison, 
iear  the  bearded  faces,  wrought  in  enduring 
Sronze,  of  Millet  and  Rousseau,  nestled  the 

ittle  Ones — 

"This  is  a  true  tale,"  I  began,  addressing 
the  Five;  "and  it  happened  yesterday." 

146 


BEAMY   JIMMY  147 

"Watch,  gentles  all,"  murmured  the 
Childe,  "for  hoary  inveracities." 

"True  and  of  yesterday,"  I  went  on,  "yet 
touched  with  old  romance  and  fraught  with 
a  solemn  question." 

"Awaken  me,"  said  the  Childe,  drowsily, 
"after  the  arrival  and  departure  of  the 
solemn  question." 

"This  is  a  record  of  art  misdirected" — I 
looked  sternly  at  Roland — "and  of  love  mis- 
placed"— I  looked  anywhere  but  at  Pruina. 

Not  at  Pruina  shimmering  like  a  patch  of 
sunshine  on  the  brown  leaves ;  for  on  this  day 
of  days  and  in  this  forest  of  forests,  I  shall 
(so  may  the  loving  local  gods  grant  me 
utterance!)  speak  unto  her  soul  the  Great 
Affirmative,  ask  of  her  heart  the  Great  In- 
terrogation. 

"Art  is  long,"  remarked  the  Infant, 
wearily,  disposing  himself  to  fictive  slumber ; 
"you  may  wake  me  at  love  misplaced." 

"The  tale,"  I  continued,  "is  the  ending  or 
continuation,  I  don't  know  which,  of  our 


148  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

little  adventure  with  the  drowning  rascal. 
While  I  was  writing  in  my  room  yesterday 
morning — " 

"He  egregiously  epics  o'  mornings," 
chanted  the  Childe  with  his  eyes  closed,  "de- 
liriously lyrics  at  noon,  and  preciously 
proses  o'  nights." 

"I  was  writing  in  my  room,"  said  I,  and 
stopped.  My  eyes,  despite  my  inhibition, 
suddenly  rested  on  Pruina — 

Today  then,  and  in  our  sacred  Fontaine- 
bleau,  I  shall  win  or  lose  her  love  forever. 
Her  love!  Nothing  else  matters.  My  art 
may  become  dumb;  my  force  may  fail;  all 
the  gods  and  godlings  of  youth  may  die — 

"The  fact,"  observed  Roland  slowly,  "that 
you  were  writing  in  your  room  has  at  last 
percolated  into  every  recess  of  our  intelli- 
gences." 

"I  was  writing  in  my  room,"  I  continued 
hastily,  "when  I  heard  a  voice  behind  me  say- 
ing: fBon  jour,  mon  vieux — ' 3' 

If  she  says  no,  I  shall  go  away.    I  shall 


BEAMY   JIMMY  149 

not  stay  and  plead,  year  after  year,  as  many 
lovers  have  done,  unmanly  and  unlovely.  I 
shall  go  away,  to  India  perhaps,  and  find  a 
mountain  cave,  an  ascetic  retreat,  where — 

'  'Bon  jour,  mon  vieux* "  prompted  the 
Childe;  "we  all  know  enough  French  to 
translate  that  perspicuous  phrase.  We  await 
further  excitements." 

"Your  idiotic  comments  put  me  out,"  said 
I.  "I  swung  round  and  there,  sitting  quietly 
on  a  chair  in  the  exact  centre  of  the  room, 
smiling  prodigiously — " 

No;  not  the  ascetic  life!  That  were  a 
sorry  return  to  the  gods  for  the  privilege  of 
having  loved  Pruina.  I  shall  do  settlement 
work  (whatever  that  is)  on  the  East  Side 
(wherever  that  is)  and  thus  live  out  the 
lonely  remainder  of  my  days.  I  shall— 

"Was  my  own  familiar  cat,"  said  the 
Childe,  "my  too  familiar  cat,  addressing  me, 
somewhat  to  my  surprise,  in  its  native 
tongue.  Shall  I  continue?" 

"Shut  up,  Infant!  There,  smiling  prodig- 


150  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

iously,  was  our  drowned  rascal.  I  jumped 
up  and  grabbed  an  Indian  club;  for  I 
thought  he  had  come  to  knife  me.  Nothing, 
as  he  assured  me  in  a  strange  jargon,  was 
further  from  his  thoughts.  It  appeared,  as 
far  as  I  was  permitted  to  understand  him, 
that  he  was  immeasurably  reconnaissant  and 
affectioned  himself  strongly  to  me  as  the 
saviour  of  his  life.  The  incident  leading  to 
his  immersion  seemed  to  have  left  no  mark 
on  his  memory.  He  wished  well  to  embrace 
me,  and  proceeded  to  do  so,  secundum  artem, 
on  both  cheeks.  It  was,  if  you  will  forgive 
the  realism,  a  garlicky  rite." 

"Lo!  the  literary  aroma!"  cried  the  Infant. 

"Then  we  settled  down  for  a  long,  long 
talk,  a  talk  all  thee's  and  thou's  and  con- 
fidences— on  his  part.  He  was,  it  seemed,  a 
burglar  by  trade,  maitre  cambrioleur,  and 
his  name  for  his  friends  (among  whom  I  was 
noblest  and  dearest)  was  L'Ombre-qui- 
passe." 

"I  warned  you,  gentles  all,"  said  the 


BEAMY   JIMMY  151 

Childe,  "to  watch  for  fanciful  men- 
dacities." 

"On  my  Little  Honour,"  I  asseverated, 
"this  is  all  true.  Moreover,  due  to  the  savj 
ing  grace  of  his  baptism,  he  had  suffered  a 
change  of  heart.  Like  the  great  Vidocq,  he 
had  decided  to  become  detective,  maitre 
mouchard,  and  win  a  second  fame  in  the 
world  of  crime.  It  would  be  less  glorious, 
but,  on  the  whole,  more  profitable.  He  would 
cut  off  the  oily  black  curls  over  his  ears,  his 
identifying  rouflaquettes,  and  give  them  to 
me  as  a  pledge  of  continuing  virtue  and 
eternal  amity." 

"Proof!"  cried  the  Infant. 

"The  proof  is  here,"  I  answered  calmly, 
handing  him  a  greasy  packet,  "which,  once 
your  incredulity  is  satisfied,  may  be  offered 
to  the  manes  of  yonder  bearded  artists." 

"To  the  ma-nes  or  the  manes?"  asked  the 
Incorrigible. 

"Furthermore,"  I  continued,  ignoring  his 
atrocity,  "he  would  well  to  give  me,  unto  me 


152  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

and  my  children's  children,  his  nickel-steel 
monseigneur,  his  famous  Jimmy,  which  he 
did.  Do  you  believe  me?"  I  asked  the  Childe 
sternly. 

"I  do,"  he  answered,  as  he  scooped  a  grave 
for  the  oily  curls;  "who  can  resist  the  capil- 
lary attraction  of  the  True?" 

"At  the  touch  of  Jimmy,"  I  went  on,  "so 
my  rascal  assured  me,  that  fat  oyster,  the 
world,  would  fly  open.  Though,  to  do  him 
justice,  he  counseled  me  to  open  the  oyster 
only  by  lawful  means.  His  friend  Hugh, 
in  his  judgment,  was  too  large  for  a  cam- 
brioleur.  Having  read  me  this  lesson  of 
practical  morality,  he  assumed  an  air  of 
mystery  and  produced  a  Bottle — " 

"May  I  ne'er  want  a  friend  nor  a  bottle  to 
give  him,"  sang  Roland,  patting  down  the 
earth  that  covered  the  rouflaquettes. 

"A  Bottle,  containing,  quoth  my  rascal,  a 
potent  anaesthetic,  or  rather  hypnotic.  An 
oath  was  an  oath;  and  he  would  not  disclose 
its  chemistry.  However,  his  beloved  one 


BEAMY   JIMMY,  153 

should  have  some  practical  hints.  Squirt  a 
few  drops  through  a  keyhole,  wait  five  min- 
utes— et  voila!  One  enters  to  find  all  the 
world  asleep,  smiling  out  of  heavenly  dreams 
and  none  the  worse  for  the  experience 
(except  in  material  possessions)  on  awaken- 
ing." 

"I  must  analyse  that  stuff,"  said  Aloys; 
"your  story  is  not  devoid  of  interest." 

"Thank  you;  and  so  you  shall.  L'Ombre- 
qui-passe  laid  stress  on  the  delights  of  his 
dream-bottle — " 

"It  is  a  natural  law,"  said  Aloys,  as  if  to 
himself,  "that  good  often  springs  from  and 
thrives  on  evil,  as  the  rose  roots  in  the  black 
soil  of  decay.  Your  pardon,  Little  Hugh." 

"He  himself,  by  accident,  had  inhaled  its 
fumes.  Tiens!  He  was  at  the  door  of 
heaven!  A  squirt  through  the  great  key- 
hole, a  wrench  of  the  Jimmy — " 

"Be  Homeric,"  cried  Roland;  "say  the 
beamy  Jimmy." 

"Good;  a  heave  of  the  beamy  Jimmy! 


He  enters.  The  angels  sleep  with  the  heads 
under  the  wings,  en  oiseaux.  Saint  Peter 
snores,  his  golden  keys  beside  him.  Golden 
crowns  everywhere.  Sceptres  and  jeweled 
belts.  Chouette!  Like  an  endless  Rue  de  la 
Paix.  He  assembles  all  in  a  colossal  sack. 
He  saves  himself !  He  wakes !  Quel  horreur!" 

"True  or  not,"  said  the  doubting  Cyril, 
"it  is  a  convincing  story." 

"I  have  the  beamy  Jimmy  and  the  dreamy 
Bottle  for  proofs,"  said  I.  "Well,  that  was 
the  end  of  our  serious  conversation;  for  he 
insisted  that  we  should  go  to  the  Lipp  and 
strangle  a  parrot." 

"Strangle  a  parrot?"  inquired  Pruina, 
looking  at  me  with  wide  disconcerting  eyes. 

The  Childe  explained.  He  often  answered 
when  Pruina  spoke  to  me.  I  often  answered 
when  Betty  spoke  to  him. 

"Absinthe  is  green,"  said  he;  "so  is  a 
parrot.  It  is  a  convivial  metaphor." 

"Did  you  go?"  asked  Betty,  in  tones  of 
antiseptic  disapproval. 


BEAMY   JIMMY  155 

"On  high  artistic  grounds,"  said  I,  "it  is 
meet  that  the  story  of  L'Ombre-qui-passe 
should  end  with  the  climax-phrase  'strangle 
a  parrot.' ' 

"Your  tale,"  said  Aloys  gravely,  "sug- 
gests a  quaint  possibility.  We  live,  as  we 
Little  Ones  believe,  in  a  universe  of  perfect 
adjustments.  Everything  that  we  need 
must  come  to  us ;  nothing  that  we  do  not  need 
can  come  to  us.  'God's  gifts  spell  futurity,' 
says  the  Book.  Now,  what,  in  the  name  of 
all  the  Little  Moralities,  shall  you  be  ex- 
pected to  do  with  a  burglar's  Jimmy  and  a 
burglarious  dream-bottle?  That  is  the 
solemn  question." 

I  shook  my  head  and  sauntered  over  to 
commune  with  the  bearded  painters.  No, 
Little  Aloys ;  that  is  not  the  question !  There 
is  another,  another,  another;  and,  Love 
helping  me,  it  shall  be  asked  and  answered 
today. 


XI 


THE  GREAT  INTERROGATION 

TTERE  then!  The  Great  Interrogation 
shall  have  this  contrasting  back- 
ground, this  grim  Gorge  d'  Apremont,  this 
geologic  charnel. 

If  only  the  Childe  would  go ! 

Pruina,  leaning  against  a  knucklebone — 
for  the  plateau  where  we  stood  was  all 
blanched  knucklebones  of  rocks,  uncount- 
able, set  in  scanty  green  brake,  grey-green 
heather,  with  here  and  there  the  emphatic 
note  of  a  charred  stump— 

Pruina,  I  say,  seated  on  the  heather,  lean- 
ing against  a  knucklebone,  was  busy  with 
her  note-book,  where  crotchets  and  quavers 
were  scattered  by  her  small  white  hand  across 
the  page,  even  as,  ages  ago,  yonder  boulders 

156 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  157 

were  dotted  on  the  plateau  by  the  great 
white  glacier.  At  another  time  I  should 
have  been  proud  of  that  simile ;  but  now  .  .  . 

If  only  that  Infant  would  go! 

"Pruina,"  said  I,  in  a  voice  shakingly  pro- 
phetic of  the  Great  Interrogation,  "what  is 
music?" 

She  touched  the  red  flower  of  shy  excuse 
with  the  finger  of  silence.  Yes ;  I  know  what 
will  happen,  what  will  grow  out  that  glacier- 
drift  across  her  note-book.  Some  day  she 
will  play  to  me,  as  we  sit  in  that  dear  room 
overlooking  the  Gardens.  She  will  play  with 
impish  fingers  that  leap  madly  on  the  sound- 
ing keys,  play  me  divine  fancies,  make  me 
achingly  happy,  make  me  gloriously  woe- 
begone, and  say:  "That  is  the  Gorge  d' 
Apremont." 

If  only  that  Infant  would  go! 

"Infant,"  said  I  softly,  "what  is  art?" 

"Art,"  he  snapped,  sketching-box  on  his 
knee,  brush  waving  in  the  air,  "art  is  this 
particular  moment.  Shut  up!" 


158  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Humbled,  I  followed  his  eyes.  In  the 
gorge  below  us  were  more  knucklebones,  in- 
numerable, neutral-tinted  by  distance;  and 
on  the  rise  beyond  still  more,  lavender 
against  lilac-green.  Living,  wistful  colours 
these,  that  seemed  to  strive  in  vain  against 
the  bleached,  dead  boniness  of  our  macabre 
plateau.  And  Pruina  (Pruina!  Pruina!) 
puts  all  that  into  her  strange  music ;  and  the 
Infant  (if  he  would  only  go!)  into  his  wild 
art.  Let  me  imitate  them  and  turn  it  into 
what  I  am  pleased  to  call  literature.  It  will 
serve  at  least  to  pass  the  time  until  (that  In- 
fant exorcised)  the  moment  of  the  Great 
Interrogation. 

A  soft  bit  of  heather;  a  kindly  knuckle- 
bone; my  note-book — me  voila! 

Betty  and  Cyril  (alas,  poor  Infant!  small 
marvel  that  you  snapped  at  me)  wander  to- 
gether, occulted  for  the  most  part  by  far, 
hyacinthian  knucklebones.  Is  there,  I 
wonder,  another  Interrogation,  made  beauti- 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  159 

ful  by  violet  distances,  in  the  Gorge  d'  Apre- 
mont? 

Aloys,  learned  in  all  that  ends  in  "ic"  or 
"ology,"  is  pursuing  an  Interrogation  of  his 
own  among  the  rocks.  I  can  hear  his  ham- 
mer tap-tapping  far  away,  questioning 
mysterious  knucklebones  and  hearing  stories 
of  their  cataclysmic  past. 

There  should  be  literature  in  all  this,  in 
the  heather  and  bracken,  in  the  trembling 
amethyst  vista  of  Interrogations,  in  the  An- 
swers moving  to  us-ward  out  of  music,  out 
of  colours,  out  of  seonian  stone,  out  of  young, 
loving  human  hearts. 

Let  me  see — 

"Is  life,"  I  wrote,  "a  question  or  an  an- 
swer? Or  is  it— 

And  then  Pruina  closed  her  note-book  and 
began  to  sing,  pianissimo — 

An  ascending  roulade  that  rose  fountain- 
like  and  sprayed  into  clear,  sunny  drops — 
then  silence. 

I  rose  and  sauntered  over  to  the  Infant, 


160  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

who  was  putting  the  final  touches  on  his 
sketch. 

I  laid  a  supplicating  hand  on  his  arm. 

"Dear  Childe,"  I  murmured,  as  another 
roulade  tinkled  heavenward,  "three  is  an  odd 
number." 

"Even  so,"  he  mumbled,  and  began  to  ar- 
range his  sketching-box.  There  are  moments 
(as  I  told  him  by  a  pat  on  the  shoulder)  of 
sublime  comprehension  in  that  dear  Infant's 
soul. 

"Pruina,"  said  I,  "what  is  music?" 

"Music,"  answered  Roland,  rising  and 
strolling  away,  "is  a  noise  with  a  good  inten- 
tion behind  it.  I  am  going  to  gather  wisdom 
from  Aloys." 

"Then  ask  him,"  said  Pruina,  "to  come 
here  and  tell  me  what  music  is." 

"Even  so,"  acquiesced  that  blessed  In- 
fant, prophetic  (to  my  ears)  of  tactful 
forgetfulness.  He  has,  as  I  have  noted 
above,  sublime  moments. 

We  were  alone — 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  161 

The  moment  had  come! 

"Pruina,"  I  said;  for  I  must  first  create 
an  enveloping  atmosphere  of  interrogation, 
"does  this" — with  a  gesture  of  affection 
towards  the  glimmering  knucklebones — 
"does  this  come  to  you  as  music  f ' 

"No,"  she  answered,  her  eyes  searching  the 
landscape  horizonward,  plane  by  plane,  into 
its  remotest  lavenders;  "no;  it  comes  as 
blessedness." 

"It  comes,"  I  forced  my  lips  to  shape  the 
Great  Noun;  "it  comes  as  love,  Pruina?" 

"As  the  All  Love,"  she  said,  gently,  "lov- 
ing Itself  through  me." 

Then  silence  fell  upon  us.  "The  All  Love, 
lov|ng  Itself  through  her."  The  thought  is 
in  our  pure  Spinoza,  in  our  fervent  Fichte; 
but  the  emotion  itself,  the^practice,  the  wor- 
ship, is  with  me  here,  alive  and  glowing, 
blond  in  the  blond  sunshine!  The  thought, 
the  verbal  abstraction,  was,  of  course,  no 
clearer  to  my  understanding;  but  the.  quick 
reality! — somehow  the  instant  consciousness 


162  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

of  this  living  miracle  (for  it  is  no  less)  re- 
moved Pruina,  as  if  she  herself  had  melted 
into  the  violet  vistas,  from  the  crude  regions 
of  interrogation. 

I  must  bring  her  back. 

"And  music?"  I  asked. 

"Music?"  she  repeated  thoughtfully;  "I 
don't  quite  know.  Perhaps — " 

"Perhaps?" 

"Perhaps  it  is  just  my  poor  way  of  ex- 
pressing the  love— 

"The  love,"  I  caught  at  the  bright  skirts 
of  the  passing  word,  "the  love  that  loves  It- 
self through  you." 

"Yes ;  and  when  I  am  making  music,  with 
this  blessedness  in  my  soul,  nothing  else 
seems  to  matter." 

"Does  nothing  else  really  matter,  Pruina? 
There  are  human  sympathies — " 

"They  fill  the  days,"  said  she;  "they  are 
unutterably  precious.  Yet  the  rare  creative 
moments,  when  they  come,  and  this" — 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  163 

she  indicated  the  glimmering  distances — 
"this"- 

"Is  more  precious  still?"  I  suggested. 

"Yes;  don't  you  feel  it  so?" 

The  time  had  come!  Interrogation  was 
about  us,  in  the  air,  in  my  fluttering  heart,  on 
her  lips. 

"Do  I  feel  it  so?"  I  answered  slowly. 
"Not  quite.  Formerly,  my  art,  my  word- 
weaving,  came  first ;  and  life,  so  far  as  it 
seemed  lovely  or  love- worthy,  was  just  the 
warp  in  my  loom.  Now,  I  see  the  world 
from  another  angle,  the  angle  of  a  Ques- 
tion—" 

Tap!  Tap! — the  little  hammer  of  Aloys 
rang  louder,  rang  on  a  nearer  knucklebone. 
Deflect  him,  ye  local  gods,  from  the  pathway 
hitherward ! 

"A  Question,"  I  went  on,  "that  involves 
in  its  answer  my  relations,  my  soul's  rela- 
tions, to  this  mysterious  life  of  ours.  Nothing 
else  matters  except  this  Great  Interroga- 
tion—" 


164  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Tap !  Tap ! — like  the  philologic  Pivert  in 
Chantecler  came  the  intruding  hammer.  And 
nearer! — fie  on  thee,  Childe  Roland!  in- 
genious friendship  should  have  discovered, 
for  my  sake,  geologic  abnormalities  in  re- 
mote perspective — 

"Then,"  said  Pruina,  "the  Dilettante  has 
become  Philosopher." 

"A  Philosopher,"  said  I,  "is  a  lover  of  wis- 
dom, whereas  I  am  rather  a  lover — " 

Tap!  Tap! — how  I  execrate  science,  a 
science  that  continuously  approximates, 
pecking  the  romance  out  of  the  young  in- 
terrogating world.  It  is  almost  here,  this 
science,  and  the  uningenious  Infant.  I  must 
wait! 

"A  lover,"  I  concluded,  hoping  that  the 
seed  of  a  subtle  phrase  would  grow  into  the 
tender  flower  of  an  expectation,  "a  lover  of 
the  most  love-worthy." 

Enter  Science.  Enter  the  Infant,  secretly 
shaking  at  me  an  apologetic  head. 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  165 

"Little  Father,"  said  Pruina,  "what  is 
music?" 

"Yes,"  said  I ;  "what  is  music?"  Not  that 
I  cared  for  the  answer,  or  for  any  answer  but 
one. 

"Music,"  began  Aloys,  when  the  Infant 
bade  him  wait. 

Cyril  and  Betty,  winding  through  the 
knucklebones,  joined  our  group.  Did  I  read 
their  faces  aright?  Was  the  one  still  vibrat- 
ing with  the  Great  Question,  the  other  still 
radiant  with  the  Great  Answer? 

I  looked  at  Roland,  thinking  to  read  the 
truth  through  him.  He  studied  them,  that 
miserable  Infant,  his  round  face  twitching 
a  little,  and  then  became  an  hysteric  clown. 

"Hear  ye!  Hear  ye !"  he  shouted.  "Beit 
known  that  Aloys,  in  the  hearing  of  gods, 
men  and  knucklebones,  will  discourse  on 
music.  Give  ear,  ye  heathers;  and  ye  little 
brackens,  hear!" 

Cyril  and  Betty  showed  the  detached  in- 
terest of  intense  happiness,  the  interest 


166  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

springing  from  the  consciousness  that  what- 
ever happens  is  part  of  the  Beatific  Now. 

I  did  not  like  it. 

"Music,"  began  Aloys  again,  "is  our  most 
solemn  vibratory  experience." 

Roland,  sighing  gustily,  sank  into  a  clump 
of  bracken. 

"I  do  not  mean,  of  course,"  continued 
Aloys,  "the  so-called  programme  music,  which 
frankly  expresses  the  earthy,  the  vernacular 
emotions.  True  music  is,  if  you  will  allow 
me  a  rather  cryptic  phrase,  the  joy  of  Space 
in  its  own  mathematics." 

At  this  point  the  Childe  groaned  in  seem- 
ing agony  and  fell  prone  among  the  bracken. 

"Consider,"  Aloys  went  on,  with  a  smile 
at  the  sufferer,  "my  intelligent  listeners — 
and  Little  Childe" — a  moan  of  contrition 
followed  this  reproof — "consider  the  joy  of 
mathematics,  the  threefold  joy.  First,  there 
is  the  pleasing  combination  of  your  spacial 
elements,  your  web  of  time,  extension, 
motion.  Next,  there  is  the  detection  of  the 


GREAT    INTERROGATION  167 

problem,  the  thing  to  be  solved,  the  Great 
Interrogation." 

"The  what?"  I  asked,  startled. 

"The  Great  Interrogation.  Third,  there 
is  the  solution  of  the  problem,  the  mastery  of 
the  mystery.  Hence,  the  threefold  joy — the 
joy  of  the  mixing,  the  joy  of  the  quest,  the 
joy  of  power.  Is  that  clear?" 

It  was  clear. 

"The  next  thought-step  is  more  difficult. 
Suppose  the  joy  you  feel  in  the  problem 
transferred  to  the  problem  itself — " 

The  Childe  bellowed  aloud. 

"Just  as  when  we  hear  a  foolish  noise  in 
our  ears  we  attribute  a  noisy  foolishness  to 
the  Infant.  Forgive  me,  Little  One!" 

"Granted,"  said  the  Childe. 

"In  thus  making  our  joy  in  the  problem 
reside  in  the  problem  itself,  we  are  but  ex- 
tending a  daily  habit,  the  habit  that  makes 
us  call  this  French  sunshine  warm,  those 
knucklebones  hard,  that  bracken  green." 

We  assented. 


168  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"One  thought-step  more,"  he  continued, 
"and  the  last  within  my  power.  Let  us 
attribute  the  joy  that  now  resides  in  the 
problem  itself  to  the  space  without  which 
there  would  be  no  problem." 

There  was  a  pause.  The  step  was  a  long 
one. 

"I  am  standing  with  reluctant  feet," 
sighed  the  Infant. 

"Fancy  that  Space  is  happy  because  it  is 
continuously  dancing  over  the  Pons  Asinor- 
um,"  said  Cyril. 

"Exactly,"  said  Aloys;  "I  accept  your 
somewhat  lightsome  phrasing.  Now,  let  us 
come  back  to  music.  This,  too,  is  mathe- 
matics and,  therefore,  a  spatial  emotion.  It 
differs  from  lines  and  numbers  only  in  that 
it  comes  to  us  through  the  ear.  Music  is 
audible  geometry,  nothing  more;  it  is  aerial 
Euclid!" 

"The  air!"  exclaimed  Pruina;  and  as  she 
.spoke  I  seemed  on  a  sudden  endowed  with 
perfect  understanding. 


"The  air!"  echoed  Aloys  (how  under- 
standing dizzied  and  blurred!) ,  "the  air  that 
expresses  space  and  the  emotions  of  space 
to  our  ears.  Now  you  know,  as  far  as  my 
poor  words  will  tell  you,  what  music  really 
is.  Try  to  feel  it  as  well  as  know  it.  Try  to 
feel  that  the  air  itself  is  glad  for  its  music 
and  that  this  gladness  is,  au  fond,  pure 
mathematics.  So  much  for  music.  Now,  let 
us  plunge  into  the  forest." 

And  Aloys,  putting  the  gathering-horn 
(always  carried  on  the  jaunts)  to  his  lips, 
blew  a  blast  of  farewell  to  the  local  gods. 

The  forest! — there  among  the  giant  trees 
and  the  listening  silences  shall  Answer  and 
Question  keep  their  sacred  tryst.  Let  us 
seek  the  forest — 

The  Childe  walks  sadly  beside  me,  Cyril 
and  Betty  a  little  apart,  and  Pruina  with 
her  father. 

Again  the  ascending  roulade  that  rose 
fountain-like  and  sprayed  into  clear,  sunnjr 
drops — 


170  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Aerial  Euclid?"  Ah,  no,  dear  Aloys;  it 
is  Pruina,  drawing  my  soul  to  Godward  and 
to  Loveward.  That  is  music,  the  only  music, 
for  Hugh  Lyddon. 


XII 

VIPERS'  BITES 

F>  AEDEKER,  in  writing  of  the  Forest  of 
Fontainebleau,  remarks  that  "Those 
who  stray  from  the  beaten  path  should  be- 
ware of  adders." 

The  warning  itself,  pinched  into  nonpareil, 
lurks  adder-like  in  the  text,  ambushed  be- 
hind distances,  dates,  italics  and  stars  of 
appreciation. 

In  the  Guide- Joanne,  one  reads  that  al- 
though the  number  of  vipers  has  diminished, 
it  is  prudent  to  wear  gaiters  to  the  knees  and 
provide  oneself  with  acide  phenique  or  alcali 
volatil! 

Now  the  Little  Ones  were  not  gaitered  to 
the  knees,  nor  did  they  saunter  armed  with 
carbolic  acid  and  ammonia  through  the  leafy 

171 


172  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

romance  of  Fontainebleau.  And  as  for 
beaten  paths! — a  true  Little  One  and  a 
beaten  path  are  antithetical,  antipodean,  oil 
and  water,  and  the  sedate  latter  disgustedly 
vanishes  from  under  the  vagrant  patterings 
of  the  former,  leaving  them — to  quote  the 
warning  Guide- Joanne  —  en  dehors  des 
routes. 

It  so  befell  us  now.  All  tracks  had  failed ; 
and  we  wandered,  broken  into  murmuring 
groups  of  two,  under  the  great,  paternal 
trees.  I  was  strolling  with  the  Hoar-frost 
(Pruina!  Pruina!),  effervescing  internally 
with  divine  eloquence  that  was  bewitched,  on 
becoming  articulate,  into  ineptest  bleatings. 

The  Great  Interrogation  played  above  us 
in  the  whispering  leaves  and  refused  to 
incarnate. 

Well,  we  moved  side  by  side  under 
those  benignant  trees,  avoiding  (I  at  least 
avoided)  contact  with  the  other  groups  that 
swung  like  double  stars,  in  orbits  of  their 
gravitating  affections. 


VIPERS'   BITES  178 

Aloys  and  Botany  (that  arid  goddess  of 
classification)  walked  hand  in  hand,  culling 
swingeing  polysyllabics  from  the  shy  tacti- 
turnities  of  the  woodland.  Man  (it  is  far 
easier  to  frame  an  aphorism  than  to  ask  a 
question)  so  desires  to  know  that  he  creates 
distinctions  and  calls  them  knowledge. 

Cyril  and  Betty  passed  slowly  through  the 
checkers  of  sun  and  shadow,  their  heads 
bowed,  their  lips  moving.  They  fret  me. 
How  can  one  shape  his  soul  into  a  Divine 
Question  when  his  friendship  is  on  the  rack? 
I  like  Cyril,  to  be  sure,  but  at  that  moment 
I  wished  him  back  in  his  native  California. 
No  Cyril  was  needed  in  the  Little  Scheme  of 
Things.  Fate  and  a  winsome  intertwining 
of  their  lives  had  brought  Betty  and  Roland 
together;  love  and  his  unasking  adoration 
should  do  the  rest.  Cyril,  ce  sacre  Cyril — 
his  name  and  an  abolishing  euthanasia 
hummed  agreeably  together  in  my  mind. 

Some  hundred  meters  away  on  a  little 
grey  hilltop,  we  saw  that  unhappy  Infant 


174  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

sitting  alone,  hunched  against  a  white 
boulder.  His  arms  were  clasped  around  his 
knees.  He  was  a  huddled  sphere  of  de- 
jection. 

An  idea!  I  would  watch  the  Infant;  and 
on  the  instant  that  he  un-sphered  himself  I 
should  blurt  forth  the  Great  Interrogation. 
Nine  words  would  suffice:  "Pruina,  I  love 
you;  will  you  be  my  wife?"  Thus,  unless  the 
Infant  became  a  petrifaction,  I  should  be 
forced  to  speak.  Anyhow,  the  act  was  on 
the  knees  of  the  gods. 

"Poor  old  Roland,"  I  sighed,  suddenly  re- 
gaining speech. 

Now  women  are  generally  pleased  to 
mark  the  sputtering  arc-light,  the  wasting 
carbons,  of  male  passion.  They  prove,  both 
the  sputter  and  the  waste,  the  voltage  of 
muliebrity,  the  dynamic  continuity  of  sex. 
But  Pruina,  being  not  Woman  but  Herself, 
was  not  pleased.  She  looked  at  Betty  and 
Cyril,  and  shook  her  head — at  the  spheroidal 
melancholy  of  the  Childe,  and  sighed. 


VIPERS'    BITES  175 

"Poor  old  Infant,"  said  she. 

"Poor  old  Infant,"  I  echoed,  my  eyes 
fixed  on  him;  "but  what  can  be  done?  The 
question  is,  is  Betty,  by  any  chance,  in  love 
with  Cyril?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered,  slowly. 
"Sometimes  I  think  she  is,  and  sometimes — 
but  not  so  often — I  think  she  is  not.  Girls," 
she  added  seriously,  "are  harder  to  read  than 
the  frost-words." 

"And  Cyril?"  I  asked,  after  a  silence  de- 
voted to  a  consideration  of  the  hieroglyphic 
feminine. 

"Of  course,"  said  she,  "that  was  clear  at 
their  first  meeting." 

I  believed  her.  How  wonderful,  how  un- 
thinkable to  us  men  are  the  messages  sent 
over  no  wire  of  logic  by  Truth  to  woman- 
kind. We  need  the  palpable  line,  we  males, 
the  insulating  glasses,  the  spaced  poles  of 
reason.  Our  receiving  instrument  is  too 
gross  to  record  the  Hertzian  flashes  from  the 
All-true. 


176  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

The  Infant  stirred  a  little.  He  raised  a 
hand  to  his  brow. 

"Pruina,"  I  began,  in  a  cavernous  whisper 
• — when  he  englobed  himself  anew — "y°u  like 
Cyril?" 

"Yes;  I  like  Cyril;  but  I  love  that  poor 
old  Infant  there." 

Love! — the  golden  word  sang  itself  into 
my  soul  and  echoed  yodel-like  in  its  empty 
spaces.  Confusing  and  continuing  echoes, 
these ;  for  there  was  much  abiding  emptiness 
in  that  soul  because  of  Pruina.  It  leaped, 
the  word,  from  wall  to  wall  of  that  aching, 
hollow  soul  of  mine  and  then  (because  I  am 
a  poor  little  poet,  I  suppose,  and  see  foolish 
metaphors  in  simple  things)  the  golden 
sound  of  it  became  a  golden  shuttle  which 
left  behind  it,  in  its  rebounding  flights, 
threads  of  opal  colour.  And  across  that 
empty  soul  grew  something  beautiful — first 
a  web  of  spider-lines  all  intertangled — then 
a  gauze,  aureate-filmy — then  a  texture  subtly 
patterned — and  then  a  Picture. 


VIPERS'   BITES  177 

The  Picture  was  not  clear  at  first  because 
the  flashing  shuttle-word  blurred  the  inner 
vision.  But  the  weaving  ceased  at  last;  the 
work  of  the  word  was  done;  and  I  saw! 

I  saw  Pruina,  blond  in  the  blond  sun- 
light- 

I  saw  Roland,  radiant,  standing  beside 
her — 

I  saw  my  Little  Duty  plain  before  me — 

"Hugh,"  said  Pruina,  "what  is  the  mat- 
ter? You  have  gone  white  as  ashes.  Are 
you  ill?" 

"No,"  I  said,  "I  have  just  recovered  my 
health,  and" — but  my  answer  was  never 
finished.  We  heard  a  shriek  from  Betty  and 
ran  in  the  direction  of  the  sound,  arriving 
some  seconds  after  the  others.  Betty  lay  on 
the  ground,  very  white,  with  Cyril  support- 
ing her  head. 

"A  viper,"  said  Aloys,  examining  the 
mangled  remains  of  a  snake,  "vipera  corn- 
munis.  She  has  fainted." 


178  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"She  is  bitten  in  the  ankle,"  cried  Cyril, 
wildly. 

Pruina  kneeled  and  pulled  off  Betty's 
stocking. 

"There  are  two  tiny  holes  here,"  she  said, 
turning  to  Aloys,  "just  above  the  ankle- 
bone.  What  ought  we  to  do?" 

The  Childe  threw  himself  on  the  ground. 

"Let  me  suck  the  poison  from  the  wound," 
said  he. 

Cyril  let  Betty's  tawny  head  settle  down 
among  the  brown  leaves,  touched  the  Childe 
gently  on  the  shoulder  and  whispered  some- 
thing in  his  ear. 

That  poor  Infant  scrambled  to  his  feet, 
pale  and  shaking,  while  Cyril  took  his  place 
and  reverently,  as  a  votary  that  kisses  a  holy 
relic,  put  his  lips  to  the  slender  ankle. 

Aloys,  while  this  was  happening,  was 
seated  on  the  ground  rapidly  dissecting  the 
adder  by  aid  of  a  penknife  and  a  magnifying 
glass.  It  made  a  tragic  little  picture  to  me 
who  stood  uselessly  aloof — Cyril,  bent  to  his 


VIPERS'   BITES  179 

sacred  task,  the  anxious  faces  of  the  two 
girls,  that  trembling  Infant,  and  the  hurried 
slicings  and  pickings  of  our  grey,  wise  Aloys. 

At  last  the  latter  spoke. 

"It  is  a  very  old  viper,"  said  he,  smiling; 
"and  its  poison  glands  and  ducts  are  dry  and 
harmless.  There  is  no  danger  to  our  dear 
Betty  except  from  the  bite  qua  bite.  And  I 
fancy  that  Little  Cyril  has  cured  that." 

There  followed  a  cheerful  bustle  of  relief. 
Betty  was  soon  brought  to — a  rosy  Betty 
when,  her  bare  foot  hidden  under  her  skirt, 
she  heard  from  Pruina  of  the  drama  that  was 
played  in  her  absence;  such  a  damask  rose 
of  a  Bettine,  in  fact,  toward  the  end  of  the 
recital,  that  I  thought  it  seemly  to  withdraw. 

Moreover,  there  were  many  reasons  why 
I  must  find  that  ashen  and  shaking  Infant 
who  had  fled  on  hearing  Aloys'  words  of 
comfort.  There  was  much  to  say  to  him, 
much  to  hint,  much  to  prepare  him  for. 

But  first  to  prepare  the  reader. 

Some  chemist  once  explained  to  me  the 


180  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

method  of  preparing  perfumes ;  and  I  stored 
part  of  it  in  my  memory  as  the  subject  of  a 
metaphor.  Rose  petals,  for  example,  quoth 
my  chemist,  are  dropped  into  some  sub- 
stance (I  forget  what)  and  left  there.  The 
substance  absorbs  the  perfume  of  the  petals 
and  is  then  dissolved  in  spirits.  And  thus 
the  perfume.  This  description  may  not  serve 
the  ends  of  Jiilichs-Platz  or  La  Rue  de  la 
Paix ;  but  it  suffices  for  a  metaphor,  which  is 
all,  in  the  last  analysis,  that  any  science  is 
good  for.  My  chemist  then  divagated  into 
synthetic  perfumes,  things,  I  gathered,  in- 
sulting to  the  rose,  a  mockery  to  man  and 
useless  as  tropes. 

Now,  to  develop  my  metaphor,  much  had 
happened  to  Roland  Elliot  and  more  had 
happened  to  me  since  he  sat,  a  globular 
grief,  on  his  little  grey  hilltop.  And  the 
growth  of  these  happenings  was  a  flower  in 
my  soul,  a  bitter-thorned,  viper-rooted,  light- 
shunning,  abnormal  bloom  with  a  perfume 
marvelous  sweet.  And  the  scented  petals  of 


VIPERS'   BITES  181 

this  flower,  so  I  read  the  word  of  fate,  I  was 
to  drop,  petal  by  petal,  into  that  dear  In- 
fant's soul.  Unknowing,  lost  in  what  he 
thinks  is  sorrow  (what  does  he  know  of 
sorrow?)  he  will  absorb  that  perfume;  and 
then,  behold !  the  spirit  of  love  will  flow  over 
him;  and  his  poor  soul  will  dissolve  into 
fragrance. 

Petal  by  petal!  Courage,  Hugh  Lyddon! 
• — one  stroke  at  a  time  and  a  slow  recover 
pulls  one  through  the  hardest  race! 

After  searching  some  time  for  Roland,  I 
came  on  Pruina,  reading  one  of  the  tiny  blue 
books  of  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale. 

"Little  Hugh,"  said  she,  "you  told  me  a 
little  fib  just  now." 

"Which  fib?"  I  asked  rather  jauntily. 

She  looked  at  me  gravely. 

"That  does  not  sound  a  bit  like  you,"  said 
she. 

"We  literary  persons,"  I  answered  airily, 
"seldom  sound  exactly  like  ourselves.  We 
are  merely  incarnate  rhetorics,  books  like 


182  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS    - 

men  walking.  We  are  poseurs;  if  we  seem 
earnest,  serious,  good,  it  is  only  the  expres- 
sion of  some  subtlety  of  technique,  some 
trick  of  divine  art.  At  one  moment  we  are 
Allegories  or  Fables ;  at  another  we  are  Epi- 
grams or  Innuendoes.  We  are  Metonymies 
and  Synecdoches  (if  you  know  what  they 
are)  and  most  egregious  Antitheses.  As 
Lord  Hamlet  said,  believe  none  of  us !  We 
have  eyes  to  see,  tongues  to  express,  and  a 
most  perplexing,  artful,  whirling,  clicking 
machine,  all  levers  and  cams  and  springs,  be- 
tween the  seeing  and  the  expression.  We 
are  rather  vain,  Little  Pruina,  and  deucedly 
insincere.  Believe  none  of  us!  We  are 
prophets  of  nothing  at  all,  high  priests  of 
nothing  whatever,  that  wander  through  a 
doting,  believing  world  darkly  veiled  in  ©u-r 
beautiful  technique.  Have  you  seen  Roland 
Elliot?" 

"I  suppose,"  remarked  Pruina  calmly, 
"that  you  are  playing  some  Little  Game?" 

"I  am  playing  no  Little  Game,"  I  an- 


VIPERS'    BITES  183 

swered  solemnly.  "I  am  stating  important 
and  undeviating  laws  of  psychology  as  I 
find  them  illustrated  in  the  depths  and  shal- 
lows of  my  own  cryptic  soul.  Have  you 
seen  Roland  Elliot?" 

"Roland  Elliot,  as  you  call  him,  vanished 
in  that  direction." 

Blessed  be  the  direction,  I  thought,  that 
won  that  identifying  sacramental  gesture. 
But  the  thought,  the  last  of  such  thoughts, 
died  in  silence. 

"I  thank  you,"  I  said.  "I  go  to  seek  that 
unhappy  Childe  and  pour  the  balm  of  wis- 
dom on  the  wound  of  love." 

And  I  bowed  and  walked  away,  very 
straight  and  soldierly,  feeling  shafts  of 
golden  interrogation  strike  just  below  the 
shoulder-blades. 

Little  Game  indeed!  It  is  a  Great  Game 
that  I  have  set  out  to  play,  the  hardest  a 
man  has  ever  played,  a  game  worthy  a  Little 
One. 


184  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

And  it  will  last  all  my  life,  Pruina,  all  my; 
lonely  life. 

But  how  interesting!  Note,  for  example, 
as  a  curious  psychologic  fact,  that  I  am  able 
to  talk  naturally  and  rather  eloquently  with 
Pruina  since  I  ceased  to  love  her. 


XIII 

PETAL  BY  PETAL 

Infant,  when  I  found  him,  lay 
stretched,  like  the  listless  author  of 
the  Elegy,  at  the  foot  of  a  nodding  beech. 

He  greeted  me  with  an  elegiac  smile,  a 
smile  that  outpathosed  saltest  tears;  and 
when  I  sat  down  beside  him  with  a  hearten- 
ing tap  on  the  shoulder,  he  caught  my  hand 
in  both  of  his,  gave  it  a  wrenching,  shaking 
grip,  and  let  it  fall.  My  big  paw  ached 
afterward,  as  if  his  suffering  had  poisoned 
it.  The  chiefest  evil  of  love  and  friendship 
is  this :  that  pain  becomes  contagious. 

"You  remember,"  he  said,  in  the  level, 
sighing  voice  of  despair. 

"What  shall  I  remember,  old  man?" 

"Our  talk,"  said  he  and  became  silent. 

185 


Ah !  for  a  saving  modicum  of  womanly  in- 
tuition! Lacking  that,  by  male  logic  and 
crass  eliminations,  I  arrived  by  slow  stages 
at  the  night  when  Cyril  came  into  our  lives, 
what  time  the  Infant  and  I  parted  in  wasp- 
ish contradiction,  each  testily  prophetic  of 
a  love  to  be  lost. 

"You  were  wrong,"  he  continued  wearily. 

"We  might  both  be  wrong,"  I  hinted. 

"I  was  right,"  said  he. 

"How  far  right?" 

"Absolutely  right.  Betty  is  engaged  to 
Cyril." 

"That  is  what  he  whispered  to  you?" 

"Yes" — the  word  was  like  a  passing  bell. 

The  time  had  come  to  drop  my  first  petal. 
O  thou  infestive  Childe!  thou  tristful  Ro- 
land! what  fragrant  anodyne  shall  be  thine, 
what  balm  in  Gilead! 

"We  might  both  be  right,"  I  said  absurd- 
ly, just  to  provoke  his  answer. 

"You  were  wrong,"  it  came. 

I  held  the  petal,  the  perfumed,  curling, 


PETAL   BY   PETAL          187 

filmy  thing,  in  the  fingers  of  my  soul  and  let 
it  flutter  downward. 

"I  am  glad  that  I  was  wrong,"  said  I; 
"and  I  am  also  glad" — an  impressive  pause 

-"that  you  were  right." 

He  showed  no  emotion.  The  petal  had 
fallen  too  softly. 

"I  am  glad  that  I  was  wrong,"  I  repeated. 

This  stirred  him. 

"You  have  reason,"  he  said.  "Suppose 
that  Cyril  had  loved  Pruina— 

"It  would  have  embarrassed  my  strateg- 
ics," said  I. 

The  reader,  whether  of  a  turn  of  mind 
geometric,  psychologic  or  merely  (as  I  hope) 
romantic,  will  be  interested  to  note  that  this 
chance  word  "Strategics"  is  the  exact  pivotal 
centre  of  this  history.  True ;  the  unconvinc- 
ing Bent,  the  beamy  Jimmy,  and  the  dreamy 
Bottle  of  L'  Ombre-qui-passe  might  have 
shaped  the  days  of  the  Little  Ones  into  the 
ordered  congruity  of  a  story,  but  the  oriented 
will,  the  thrill  in  the  spinal  marrow,  the 


188  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

quintessential  freakishness  of  real  life  would 
all  have  been  lacking  without  Strategics. 
Moreover,  the  word  was  needed  to  give  form 
to  my  inchoate  good  intention. 

"It  would  have  embarrassed  my  strateg- 
ics," said  I. 

A  dainty  petal,  this ;  but  it  fell  unheeded. 

"I  am  also  glad,"  I  said  again,  "that  you 
were  right." 

His  poor  soul  looked  out  at  me  through 
unlighted  windows. 

"I  am  too  dull  to  understand,"  he  sighed. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  understand,  dear 
Childe,"  I  said  gently,  "I  want  you  to  feel 
that  there  is  still  fragrance  on  earth  even 
though  your  own  rose  has  faded." 

"It  is  sweet  enough  to  you,  no  doubt,"  he 
moaned.  "You  have  Pruina." 

I  have  Pruina! — Infant!  Infant! — what 
do  you  know  of  pain? 

"I  am  glad,"  I  remarked,  hoping  to  wake 
him  by  the  drumming  repetition,  "that  you 
were  right." 


PETAL   BY    PETAL          189 

"You  are  glad  that  I  was  right,"  he  mut- 
tered, repeating  the  phrase  twice  or  thrice. 
"Do  you  mean  that  you  are  glad  that  I  can't 
have  Betty?" 

Now  was  the  time  for  a  handful  of  petals, 
delivered  in  a  rich  casket  of  words. 

"You  phrase  the  thought,  or  rather  you 
voice  my  inner  feelings,  rather  infelicitous- 
ly,"  said  I.  "A  spade  should  not  be  called  a 
spade  when  it  is  used  for  sublime  purposes. 
The  church  knows  this ;  and  before  the  altar 
a  coat  becomes  a  chasuble  and  a  chemise  de 
nuit  a  surplice.  My  gladness  is  not  ortho- 
dox gladness,  the  sort  that  springs  impul- 
sively from  a  patent  good"  (this  was  a 
petal!)  "near  at  hand"  (another!).  "No! 
it  is  rather  the  gladness  that  grows  out  of 
the  death-enriched,  tear-watered  soil  of 
present  grief"  (a  petal).  "It  sees  you  in 
your  whole  life  from  cradle  to  crematory — " 

"I  wish  I  were  in  it  now,"  he  interrupted. 

"From  cradle  to  crematory,"  I  went  on; 
"and  it  marks  the  gradual  convergence  of 


190  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

certain  bright  lines  that  move  to  some  shin- 
ing focal  point,  the  point  of  your  true,  last- 
ing happiness"  (a  petal).  "Dear  little 
Betty  herself" — he  moaned  at  her  name — 
"may  be  one  of  these  bright  lines,  these 
pleasing  tendencies,  that  lead  you  to  your 
real  destiny"  (a  petal).  "My  gladness,  you 
see,  is  no  present  joy;  it  looks  far  into  the 
future." 

"Of  course  she  would  love  him,"  said  he. 

"Far  into  the  future,"  I  repeated;  "and 
it  sees  you  blessed.  It  sees  you  moving, 
year  by  year,  toward  the  goal  of  your  noble 
art;  and,  blond  in  the  blond  sunshine,  love 
walks  beside  you." 

This  was  a  golden  petal,  such  as  I  have 
seen  fall,  in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  from  a 
Gloire  de  Dijon. 

"Love  is  not  for  me,"  he  said,  "any  more 
forever." 

"Love  comes  to  all  true  artists,"  I  pro- 
ceeded, "in  answer  to  the  call  of  their  art. 


PETAL   BY   PETAL          191 

It  may  almost  be  measured  in  units  of  the 
artistic  vehicle." 

"No  more  forever,"  he  murmured. 

"Love,"  I  insisted  stoutly;  for  the  phrase 
was  too  pearl-like  to  be  wasted  on  grunting 
inattention,  "may  be  accurately  measured  in 
units  of  the  artistic  vehicle.  You  painter- 
folk,  for  example,  have  your  triad  of 
coloured  clays,  your  blue,  your  red,  your 
yellow.  So  your  heart,  that  palette  of  the 
emotions,  must  have  its  three  colours  too — 
its  calf-love — who  was  she,  Infant?" 

He  smiled  for  the  second  time,  most  wear- 
Uy. 

"There  has  been  no  one  but  Betty,"  said 
he. 

"Its  calf-love,"  I  continued  unperturbed, 
"its  Betty  and  Another." 

"No  other,"  he  sighed. 

"With  these  simple  elements  he  can  solve 
his  simple  problems,  his  genre,  his  nature 
morte,  his  paysage  intime." 

"No  other,"  he  repeated;  "no  other." 


192  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"The  music-folk,"  I  went  on,  "with  their 
diatonic  scales,  their  chromatics,  their  reeds 
and  strings  and  brazen  complexities,  require 
a  long  gamut  of  heart  adventures.  Witness, 
in  the  biographies  of  musicians,  the  volume 
and  mutability  of  their  affaires  du  cceur.  A 
misogynist  might  paint  La  Joconde;  but 
only  the  chaste  lover  of  many  could  write 
the  Fifth  Symphony." 

"You  are  talking  rot,"  said  the  Childe. 

Perhaps  I  was;  no  matter! 

"We  writer-folk,"  I  continued,  disregard- 
ing his  comment,  "with  our  dictionaries  of 
symbols  and  our  incalculable  combinations  of 
them,  need  for  our  craft  an  infinity  of  ama- 
tory experiences." 

"You  ought  to  be  Sultans  of  Turkey,"  he 
broke  in  savagely.  I  had  his  attention  at 
last! 

"No,"  I  answered  softly;  "not  if  one  is  a 
writer  and  a  Little  One.  He  is  then  like  a 
bee,  to  employ  a  thread-worn  trope,  that 
gathers  the  sweetness  of  a  thousand  flowers 


PETAL    BY    PETAL          193 

but  leaves  the  flowers  unchanged.  The 
clover  is  his,  the  pure  passion  of  an  instant; 
the  curved  horn  of  the  honeysuckle ;  and  the 
tilleul's  myriad  blossoms.  And  if  he  hovers 
a  while,  in  ecstasy,  over  some  tender  thing 
standing  radiantly  blond  in  the  blond  sun- 
shine—" 

"You  said  that  before."  Truly,  I  had  his 
attention. 

"Blond  in  the  blond  sunshine,  it  is  that  he 
finds  in  it  a  symbol  of  the  Love  he  loves,  the 
goal  and  the  grail  of  his  eternal  quest.  But, 
aware  that  it  is  only  a  symbol,  he  buzzes 
away.  It  is  the  honey  he  wants,  not  the 
honey-bearer!" 

Lost  was  the  elegiac  pose,  as  the  Childe 
sat  up  briskly  on  one  of  the  fantastic  roots. 

"You  seem  to  me,"  he  said  very  slowly,  "to 
be  absolutely  mad." 

"Was  Hamlet  mad?"  This  question,  so 
suggestive  of  my  present  spring  of  action, 
was  a  strategic  fault.  His  mind,  however, 
stopped  at  the  literary  fact. 


194  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"He  was  a  character  in  fiction;  and  his 
madness  was  a  ruse." 

"We  are  all,  in  a  certain  sense,"  said  I, 
shying  rapidly  from  the  end  of  his  phrase, 
"characters  in  fiction,  or  play-actors.  No 
man  is  all  himself.  He  acts,  or  thinks  he 
acts,  before  the  audience  of  his  own  times. 
Hence,  he  is  never  quite  what  he  is,  but 
rather  what  he  wants  others  to  think  he  is. 
Now,  the  great  masters  of  the  pen — " 

He  raised  a  satiric  eyebrow. 

" — and  even  the  poor  little  apprentices 
like  me,  stand  in  fancy  as  mediators  and 
spokesmen  between  Abstract  Love  and  the 
stuttering  world.  So,  for  the  dear  sake  of 
that  Abstract,  we  all,  master  and  apprentice 
alike,  buzz  away  from  the  beautiful  Con- 
crete, growing  so  blond  in  the  blond  sun- 
shine— " 

"I  suppose,"  he  said,  "that  you  are  playing 
some  damned  Little  Game." 

Just  Pruina's  words,  barring  the  incan- 
descent adjective! 


PETAL   BY   PETAL          195 

"I  am  playing  no  Little  Game,"  I  replied. 
"I  sought  for  you  because  you  were  un- 
happy"— he  sank  back  into  his  former  atti- 
tude— "and  I  hoped  to  bring  you  comfort 
by  wrenching  your  mind  away  from  the  par- 
ticular and  making  it  touch  the  fringes  of 
universal  law.  Somewhere,  dear  Roland, 
somewhere  in  the  universe  Love  is  waiting 
for  you,  standing- 
He  sat  up. 

"You  will  be  telling  me  next,"  he  jerked, 
"that  there  are  as  good  fish — " 

"No!"  I  cried.  "I  am  an  artist,  Infant, 
not  a  fishmonger;  and  one  should  never  en- 
shrine a  possible  truth  in  impossible  lan- 
guage." 

"But  you  mean  the  same  thing  I" 
"I  mean  something  quite  different.  A 
fish  caught  or  a  fish  missed  is  just  a  fish — not 
a  mystic  symbol.  The  proverb,  vulgar  in 
form,  vulgarises  love.  The  women  we  love 
are  embodiments  of  Love  itself  or  (to  return 
to  my  first  metaphor)  the  vehicles  of  artistic 


196  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

emotions.  To  you  they  are  splendid  colours, 
to  me  fragrant  and  perfected  phrases.  Per- 
haps (who  knows?)  some  day  you  may  come 
on  some  slender,  swaying  vision,  standing  so 
blond  in  the  blond  sunshine — " 

"You  blessed  old  donkey,"  said  he,  in 
something  like  his  own  cherry  voice,  "y°u 
are  absolutely  daft;  but  no  doubt  you  are 
trying  to  brace  me  up.  One  would  think, 
what  with  your  bees  and  your  phrases,  that 
you  were  no  longer  in  love  with  Pruina." 

The  time  had  come !  O  transcendent  petal ! 

"I  am  no  longer  in  love  with  Pruina," 
said  I. 

"What?"  he  shouted. 

"I  am  no  longer  in  love  with  Pruina." 

"You  are  a  most  egregious  ass,"  he  re- 
marked. 

"I  am  no  longer  in  love  with  Pruina." 

"Or  a  most  egregious  liar." 

"No;  merely  a  man  expiessing  himself 
faithfully  to  an  old  friend  in  all  the  sincerity 
of  his  artistic  consciousness — and  conscience. 


PETAL   BY   PETAL          197 

3  learnt  the  perfect  phrase,  gathered  the 
honey,  breathed  the  fragrance — et  voild!  The 
hunger  of  art  is  satisfied !  I  leave  her  stand- 
ing so — " 

"Not  again!"  he  cried.  "Of  all  the  cold- 
blooded brutes !  How  about  her?  Eh?  How 
about  that  lovely  girl?" 

Thank  the  strategic  gods  1  The  petal  had 
fallen  home. 

"The  flower  is  indifferent  to  the  bee," 
said  I. 

"You  are  metaphor-mad,"  cried  the  In- 
fant; and  I  loved  him  for  the  pitying  anger 
in  his  voice.  "You  are  not  a  bee,  but  a  man. 
Pruina  is  not  a  flower,  but — " 

"A  flower,"  said  I,  "  a  delicate  flower 
standing  so — " 

At  this  moment  the  conversation  was  in 
danger  of  losing  its  savour  of  art.  When  the 
Delphic  whisper  becomes  a  shriek,  when  the 
arri&re  pensee  bleats,  art  ceases. 

Luckily,  however,  only  the  beginning  of 
the  Infant's  outburst  (mostly  imprecatory) 


198  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

was  permitted.  The  rest  was  lost  in  the  blare 
of  Aloys'  horn  calling  the  Little  Ones  to- 
gether. 

We  were  the  last  to  reach  the  place.  Cyril 
and  Betty,  those  demure  shakers  of  hearts, 
were  sitting  together  on  the  ground,  he  illus- 
trating with  twigs  and  pebbles  the  ground- 
plan  of  some  ancient  temple.  And  Pruina 
was  standing  by  her  father,  one  hand  snug- 
gling within  his  arm  while  the  other  held  the 
rallying  horn. 

It  was  Pruina  herself — so  cunningly  in- 
termeshed  are  the  wheels  of  Fate — that  blew 
the  closing  summons. 

Summons? — or  was  it  "Taps"  played  over 
the  grave  of  a  buried  passion? 


XIV 

BETWEEN  THE  HOENS 

TV/TEMORY  is  a  freakish  jade,  well 
worthy  to  be  a  Little  One.  She  sits 
in  the  twilight  corners  of  our  souls  stringing 
rosaries  of  foolish  beads.  Values  and  beauty 
are  nothing  to  her;  she  marries  whim  to 
whim,  which,  fingered  not-prayerfully  by 
bald  psychology,  change  on  a  sudden  to  pro- 
foundest  Laws  of  Association. 

Hence  it  is  that  the  blast  of  Pruina's  horn 
stirs  memories  of  another;  a  horn  sounding 
far  above  me  from  slopes  of  snow,  signal  of 
the  bob-sleds  starting  above  Les  Avants. 

Memory  leaves  no  gap  between  these 
blasts.  I  see  Aloys  and  Pruina,  the  Infant 
and  Hugh  Lyddon,  amid  the  beaches  of 
Fontainebleau,  and  then  in  a  flash,  together 

199 


200  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

still,  amid  the  hills,  my  great  confederates. 

But,  notwithstanding  the  witness  of  mem- 
ory, there  were  many  days  between  the 
horns,  days  of  beauty,  work,  mounting  pas- 
sion, hopeless  love  and  strategics.  Each  of 
the  Little  Ones,  in  that  interval,  embodied 
one  or  more  of  these  things.  I,  for  my  part, 
was  simply  Strategics! 

Happy  days?  Ah!  that  is  now  another 
matter.  "Happiness,"  trumpets  the  Book, 
"is  not  being  happy  but  doing  happily."  If 
that  be  so,  then  some  of  us  were  happy;  and 
as  to  the  rest — who  knows? 

Aloys,  for  example,  our  calm,  wise  Aloys, 
was  surely  blessed.  Day  by  day  the  frost 
grew  ever  easier  to  read  and  its  messages 
ever  ghostlier  and  nobler.  We  believed  in 
his  work,  we  Little  Ones,  or  we  "willed  to 
believe"  (which  may  be  the  same  thing) ; 
and  in  this  atmosphere  of  faith  the  frost- 
ferns  grew  mightily.  One  day,  I  remember, 
he  strode  up  to  me  in  our  Gardens,  where  I 
was  working  near  the  memory-haunted 


Colonne  des  Baisers,  waving  a  photograph 
of  the  latest  cryptogram.  He  handed  it  to 
me  with  a  reverent  gesture,  as  one  might 
present,  blaringly  announced,  the  message 
of  a  great  king.  Indeed,  the  thing  was  rare- 
ly beautiful.  No  sinuous  dragon  writhing 
out  of  a  curling,  crisping  sea  in  some  old 
Chinese  painting  had  ever  lovelier  opulence 
of  artistic  surprises,  of  curve-themes  re- 
peated and  embellished  and  developed  into 
a  symphony  of  fernlike  grace.  It  seemed  no 
work  of  chance,  no  whim  of  crystalization; 
but  rather  abstract  Expression  and  abstract 
Beauty  shaped  somehow  by  viewless  will  out 
of  viewless  vapour. 

"What  does  it  say?"  I  asked. 

"It  says  'I  am,*"  he  answered;  "only 
those  two  words,  echoed  curve  by  curve  and 
each  exquisitely  different.  I  am!" 

There  were  tears  in  his  eyes;  I  dared  to 
ask  no  further  questions;  and  he  strode 
away.  Beauty  is ;  Love  is ;  and  the  loving 
God;  and  Another — what  more  does  Aloys, 


202  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

what  more  does  any  one  of  us  need  to  know? 
Surely  he  was  very  happy. 

What  of  Cyril?  His  love,  save  as  an  ally 
of  Strategics,  did  not  interest  me.  Indeed, 
even  to  us  who  knew  of  his  engagement  to 
Betty,  his  work  seemed  to  overshadow  his 
love.  This  no  doubt  was  a  matter  of  ex- 
ternals, of  reticent  New-Englandism.  None 
of  us,  unless  it  was  Betty,  got  below  his 
surface. 

But  Cyril's  work  was  its  own  herald.  It 
sprang,  in  the  Gallic  idiom,  at  the  eyes.  The 
rewards  of  the  School  came  to  him  as  of 
right,  rewards  not  easily  won  in  a  nation 
where  art  beats  hotly  in  the  blood  and  comes, 
a  precious  heritage,  to  the  humblest.  We 
bleak  Yankees,  who  cannot  "let  ourselves 
go,"  who  see  in  beauty  rather  craftsmanship 
than  emotion,  must  be  content  for  some  cen- 
turies, I  think,  to  warm  our  shivering  souls 
by  the  glow  of  alien  fires.  When  Naples, 
when  Sicily,  when  the  despised  Calabria, 
shall  have  leavened  our  race  with  the  yeasty 


BETWEEN    THE    HORNS    203 

ferment  of  the  south,  then,  perhaps — who 
knows? — we  may  then  produce  the  sym- 
phony, the  poem,  the  picture,  the  temple,  of 
the  new  Democracy.  But  Cyril  needed  no 
such  yeast — he  was  a  Little  One! 

What  of  Betty?  She  lived  her  sweet,  im- 
perturbable, dual  life,  in  sterilized  linen  and 
smudged  blouse,  nursing  the  sick  and  etch- 
ing the  copper,  a  comely  and  desirable 
Anomaly.  As  nurse  and  artist  she  had 
every  reason  for  content;  and  I  have  no 
doubt  (except  for  a  timid  masculine  reserva- 
tion) that  she  was  placidly  happy.  How 
her  happiness  and  goodness  can  be  trans- 
lated into  terms  of  the  Childe's  wasting 
misery,  I  cannot  say;  that  also  is  an  Anom- 
aly, feminine  like  herself,  but  not  so  comely 
or  desirable. 

I  used  the  words  "wasting  misery"  to 
image  the  Childe.  Betty's  placid  joy  may 
have  provoked  the  antithesis,  which,  if  not 
sadly  inept,  needs  expansion. 

Perhaps  "wasting,"  nounless  and  alone, 


204  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

connotes  well  enough  the  filing,  grinding, 
shredding  lathe  in  which  he  was  spinning. 
It  hints  at  least  the  bodily  story.  The 
cherubic  look  had  gone;  the  cheek-bones 
showed,  valleyed  by  grey  hollows.  No  need 
any  more  to  "train  down  the  bare  outline," 
as  I  once  advised.  He  fed  like  an  ascetic; 
and  rarely,  in  those  meager  days,  could  he 
be  lured  chez  Lavenue  or  Voisin.  His  tailor 
was  far  more  content  with  his  shape  than 
was  I.  To  be  sure,  dignity  (a  negligible 
quality  in  a  Little  One)  gained  something 
by  this  attenuation.  "He  gets  more  Roland 
and  less  Infant  every  day,"  said  Cyril.  "I 
can't  make  it  out." 

And  no  one  made  it  out,  as  far  I  could 
note,  except  Pruina  and  me.  For  Pruina 
and  I,  under  the  sway  of  compelling  Stra- 
tegics, made  the  Infant  a  focus  of  intensest 
observation. 

So  his  body  wasted.  That  is  easy  to 
phrase;  but  to  envisage  his  mind,  his  soul, 
calls  for  a  filmier  vehicle.  I  am  only  sure  of 


BETWEEN    THE    HORNS    205 

this,  that  "misery"  is  not  that  magic  thing, 
the  right  word.  Yet  it  has  some  warrant. 
"Grief,"  says  the  Book,  with  surprising 
modernity,  "is  only  life  short-circuited";  and 
I  fancy  that  the  simile  (Aloys  showed  me 
why)  is  exact.  When  the  vibrant  force 
flows  through  the  whole  system  of  the  soul, 
brisk  bells  call,  informing  sounders  click, 
motors  buzz,  filaments  glow,  carbons  hum 
and  chuckle,  and  even  stock- tickers  (which 
have  little  to  do  with  soul)  add  their  impish 
jargon.  But  when  this  sacred  vibration 
circles  in  some  petty  round,  the  poor  soul 
becomes  all  dumb  and  actionless,  and  (like 
Gloucester's  blinded  earl)  "all  dark  and 
comfortless." 

Now,  although  the  Childe  was  short-cir- 
cuited, yet  the  intense  voltage  of  his  idee  fixe 
saved  him  from  cold  and  inaction.  Its  forces 
operated  three  sub-stations  between  which 
his  waking  existence  was  divided — his  Work, 
our  Nurseries  and  Cadwalader  Bent.  And 


206  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

he  showed  in  each  the  same  hot,  leaping 
energy. 

The  artistic  results  of  this  period,  the  half 
year  that  lay  between  the  horns  of  Fontaine- 
bleau  and  Les  Avants,  were  amazing  for 
quantity  and  intensity.  Esquisses  and  cro- 
quis  fell  from  him  like  leaves.  He  essayed 
many  vehicles;  aquarelle,  gouache,  pastel, 
oil,  charcoal,  pencil  and  flagrant  marriages 
of  these  materials — he  used  them  all.  He 
groped,  wandered,  created,  destroyed,  for 
some  four  months ;  and  then,  on  a  sudden,  in 
one  hectic  week  (when  I  was  denied  his 
studio)  he  painted  Les  Ailes  Rognees.  The 
world  knows  the  picture  now  through  the 
crude  publicities  of  popular  art,  knows  at 
least  something  of  its  austere  loveliness.  But 
the  world  cannot  grasp,  indeed  not  even  all 
the  Little  Ones  could  grasp,  the  contents  of 
that  beauty.  "It  makes  one's  soul  ache,"  I 
heard  a  precieuse  say,  "to  see  Love  clip  off 
those  lovely  opalescent  wings.  I  wonder 
why  he  does  it!" 


BETWEEN   THE   HORNS    207 

This  book,  madame,  tells  why! 

But  in  our  Nurseries  the  Childe  showed 
none  of  the  fever  of  the  studio.  There  he 
was  his  old  self  and  more,  frolic,  rattling, 
foldtre.  In  one  thing  only  had  he  changed : 
he  could  talk  to  Betty!  No  stammering 
now;  no  pink-faced  idiocies.  I  do  not  know 
whether  the  others  noticed  this  fact;  but  it 
was  shouted  at  me  because  of  a  parallel 
prodigy:  I  could  talk  to  Pruina!  These 
hand  in  hand  phenomena  are  curious,  I 
think,  and  well  worth  the  analysis  of  psy- 
chology. Their  causes,  without  tracing  the 
intermediate  processes,  were  obviously  the 
same — love  was  honourably  or  diplomatical- 
ly suppressed.  But  (to  add  something  more 
to  the  data  of  psychology)  the  identity  of 
the  glib  results  was  independent  of  motive. 
His  was  the  happiness  (dear  old  Infant!) 
of  Betty  and  Cyril.  Mine  was  simply 
Strategics.  I  used  to  wonder  at  times  if, 
when  I  had  played  my  Little  Game  to  the 
end,  when  Roland  opened  his  eyes  and  saw 


208  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Pruina  as  she  really  was,  he  would  be  strick- 
en dumb  before  her.  I  hoped  so ;  his  silence 
would  be  a  triumphant  song  to  me,  a  paean 
of  Strategics. 

The  recurrence  of  the  word  reminds  me 
of  the  third  substation  of  the  Infant's  activi- 
ties— Cadwalader  Bent.  Possessed  by  the 
shadowy  fear  of  some  vague  evil  to  Cyril, 
he  haunted  Bent's  society,  to  the  end  that 
the  danger,  foreseen,  might  be  crushed  or 
turned  aside.  I  thought  the  apprehension 
groundless.  Bent  continued  to  be  inartistic, 
unconvincing,  like  a  crude  blur  in  charcoal. 
Moreover,  the  worst  that  the  most  malign 
testator  can  do  is  to  leave  his  fortune  to  a 
benign  corporation. 

The  Childe,  however,  studied  Bent's 
wicked  serpent  of  a  brain  with  the  birdlike, 
fluttering  attention  of  fear.  Every  visit  he 
made  to  Bent  was  patent  the  following  day 
in  his  sour  mood  and  truculent  speech,  con- 
ditions aggravated  not  a  little  by  my  un- 
belief. In  vain  I  pictured  Bent  as  a  humor- 


BETWEEN    THE    HORNS    209 

ous  Giant  Blunder-bore  watching  invisible 
over  a  herd  of  fattening  Little  Ones; — to 
Roland  Elliot  he  was  nothing  humorous; 
and  the  temper,  vocabulary  and  appetite  of 
my  friend  suffered  grievously  thereby. 

Appetite — the  word  suggests  gastronomy 
and  a  sweet  happening  of  this  period. 

It  was  Betty's  birthday;  and,  barkening 
ever  to  the  whispers  of  profound  Strategics, 
I  gave  her  and  her  betrothed  a  Little  Dinner 
at  Lavenue's. 

There,  in  his  old  Parisian  days,  the  cigar- 
ettes of  R.  L.  S.  (that  rare  Little  One) 
added  its  ghost  to  the  pervading  mistiness. 
That  must  have  been  in  the  crowded  room 
below,  where  a  chastened  Bohemia  gathers 
o'  nights  for  its  music  and  consommation. 
There,  when  your  demie  blonde  stands  bead- 
ing on  your  table,  when  the  red-tipped 
matches  of  France  have  done  their  reluctant 
work,  and  the  air  grows  thick  and  the  music 
comes  down  at  nine  o'clock  from  the  salon 
above — there  it  is  good  for  a  Little  One  to 


210  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

be  and  surpassingly  good  to  remember  in 
his  exiled,  im-Parised  days. 

But  that  room  is  for  common  evenings 
when  one  has  already  dined,  tant  bien  que 
mal,  and  longs  to  herd  in  Bohemia  with  the 
unknown  masters  of  the  art  to  come.  Betty's 
birthday,  her  betrothal  (now  "formally  an- 
nounced") and  high  Strategics,  demanded 
another  mise  en  scene,  the  white  room  above 
with  the  pale  green  trellis  that  hints  some- 
how, to  a  Little  One,  of  vagrant  holidays 
and  Italian  villeggiature. 

In  this  retreat,  under  the  Arcadian  influ- 
ences of  our  trellis,  we  fed  on  gastronomic 
marvels  that  came  veiled  in  exotic  names.  I 
had  made  a  concordat  (nothing  less)  with 
the  chef  garcon  (born  for  the  Vatican,  but 
providentially  deflected)  that  afternoon; 
and  the  dinner,  thanks  to  him,  became  an 
aesthetic  rite.  He  had  put  my  suggestions 
blandly  aside,  had  written  the  menu  as  it 
were  a  papal  rescript,  and  ended,  "And  we 


BETWEEN   THE   HORNS    211 

will  finish,  if  monsieur  pleases,  with  P£che 
cardinale,  a  specialite  of  the  House." 

Monsieur  did  please.  Alone,  upon  the 
rescript,  monsieur  could  foretaste  the  de- 
lights of  Peche  cardinale. 

"And  we  will  drink,"  I  said,  trying  to 
speak  firmly,  "Vouvray  mousseux." 

Consideration,  pencil  to  lips — doubt — an 
indulgent  smile — consent! 

"Bien,  m'sieur" 

True,  Little  Ones,  I  think,  are  gourmets 
only  by  accident.  Content  and  passing  con- 
tent with  the  fare  of  Omar,  seeking  no  diete- 
tic complexities,  they  nevertheless  accept  the 
latter,  if  these  happen  along,  as  sparrows  do 
crumbs,  with  gay  twitterings.  So  my  papal 
friend,  watching  our  enjoyment  with  a  pas- 
toral smile,  was  content  with  his  flock.  When 
the  Peche  cardinale  appeared,  he  exhibited  it 
himself  to  Betty  and  dispensed  it  like  a  bene- 
diction. 

It  was  with  the  Peche  cardinale,  or  rather 
with  its  (may  I  say?)  occultation,  that 


212  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

began  the  stress  of  the  gathering,  its  tense 
emphasis. 

Up  to  that  moment  our  feast  had  been 
for  us  all  a  merry  Nursery  of  an  uncommon 
kind ;  though  to  me,  perhaps,  it  had  a  subtler 
flavour  than  to  the  others,  the  gust  of  dainty 
Strategics. 

Suppose  yourself,  Little  Reader,  seated 
at  the  next  table  on  my  left  hand,  playing 
with  the  bread-crumbs,  sipping  your  wine 
and  peering  furtively  to  us-ward.  You  see 
a  round  table  de  six  converts,  with  a  pale 
golden  something  beading  in  the  glasses  and 
deep  golden  chrysanthemums  from  the 
Marche  aux  Fleurs — rather  Pruinesque  than 
Bettesque,  the  colour-scheme,  an  effect  in- 
tended for  the  eye  of  Roland  Elliot,  lover 
and  artist.  You  see  in  profile  Hugh  Lyd- 
don,  strategist  and  master  of  the  feast.  On 
his  left  hand,  Pruina!  Her  back  is  toward 
you,  but  her  hair,  even  by  electric  light,  is 
very  good  to  look  upon;  though  it  sounds  a 


BETWEEN   THE   HORNS    213 

tenderer  note  of  colour  under  the  touch  of 
the  blond  sunshine. 

Next  to  her  (this  is  Strategics!)  sits  that 
dear  Childe,  our  Infant,  Roland  Elliot.  You 
see  his  face,  quartering  from  the  right,  a 
pale  face  now,  its  lines  strengthened  and 
dignified  by  suffering  and  intensest  labour. 
A  happy  face  tonight!  and  as  it  turns  now 
and  again  to  Pruina  it  catches,  very  beauti- 
fully, I  think,  something  of  the  spiritual 
purity  of  hers.  It  is  so,  looking  back  to 
those  days,  that  I  love  to  remember  it. 

Then  Aloys,  that  fervent,  patient  spirit. 
You  will  read  him  at  once,  if  you  can  look 
below  the  gaunt,  grey  husk  of  the  man,  read 
him  as  the  dweller  amid  voices  and  visions 
who,  for  the  sake  of  those  he  loves,  descends 
to  share  the  mood  and  movement  of  their 
daily  life.  And,  if  you  have  an  eye  for  the 
invisible,  Little  Reader,  you  will  feel  a  cer- 
tain inward  stir,  a  sense  of  consecration, 
from  having  gazed  on  Aloys  Guex-Beny. 

Between  him  and  the  dark  bulk  of  Hugh 


214  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Lyddon  sit  Cyril  and  Betty,  both  meshed, 
unknown  to  themselves,  in  viewless  Strateg- 
ics. He  is  whimsically  altering  the  plan  of 
Azay  le  Rideau  into  a  Palace  of  joy  for 
the  Little  Ones.  The  projet,  as  you  see, 
pleases  us. 

You  have  now,  if  your  fancy  be  of  the 
helpful  sort,  a  picture  of  the  six  Little  Ones 
when  they  heard  for  the  first  time  the  strains 
of  "La  Brise  du  Reve,"  what  time  the 
orchestra  descended  to  expectant  Bohemia 
and  its  place  was  taken  (such  is  the  custom 
at  Lavenue's)  by  a  pale  magician  with  a 
violin  and  a  darkly  bearded  assistant  with  a 
piano. 

Watch  the  Little  Ones  now,  you  of  the 
helpful  fancy,  as  that  pale  magician  tosses 
back  his  yellow  hair,  cuddles  his  violin  under 
his  chin  and  begins  to  play  upon  their  heart- 
strings. 


XV 

LA  BEISE  DU  REVE 

IXTHEN  this  fantasia  was  first  played  at 
Queen's  Hall  it  was  called  "Dream 
Zephyrs,"  a  sticky-sweetness  that  has  clung. 
It  was  given  its  French  name  when  it  was 
orchestrated  for  the  Concert  Colonne.  But 
the  Little  Ones  call  it  "Op.  5."  It  needs 
no  title.  It  is  simply — Itself. 

The  critics,  vocative  by  vocation,  dub  it 
"programme  music."  Perhaps! — but  if  it 
be  programme  music,  let  me  coin  a  verb  and 
ask  you,  dear  sirs,  what  it  prographs? 

No;  the  fantasia  in  Eb  is  music,  absolute 
music,  a  thing  higher  even  than  words. 

Do  not  mistake  me!  I,  Hugh  Lyddon, 
apprentice  of  letters,  love  and  reverence  my 
own  art.  I  worship  its  mechanism,  its  form, 

215 


216  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

as  ends  in  themselves  and  strive  mightily  to 
make  these  vibrant  and  pure.  For  although 
I,  a  wistful,  nonchalant  Little  One,  warped 
by  heredity,  teased  by  environment,  be- 
trayed by  instruction,  can  add  no  force  of 
my  own  to  the  thought-rush  of  the  world, 
yet  I  can,  the  least  of  us  can,  by  patience 
and  love,  do  something  toward  shaping  the 
matrix  that  shall  hold  the  final  word  of  the 
ghost  in  man. 

But  I  know  that  my  art  is  a  mediate  art, 
a  stuff  of  hints  and  indirections,  a  distant 
reflex  of  human  emotions.  Whereas  music 
is  emotion  itself,  bodiless  and  unconditioned. 

Shut  your  eyes,  surrender  your  petulant, 
febrile  will,  and  ah !  how  it  comes,  this  music ! 
All  the  dark  emptiness  behind  the  eyes,  all 
the  hollow  chambers  within  the  ears,  all  the 
vague,  blind  dome  that  seems  to  house  your 
soul,  are  fulfilled  with  harmony.  There 
is  no  orchestra,  no  sound  from  without; 
the  music  is  within  you,  begotten,  ripened 
and  born  within  you,  and  growing  from 


LA   BRISE    DU   REVE       217 

beauty  into  emotion  (your  own  soul-beauty 
and  your  own  soul-emotion)  becomes  You, 
triumphantly  and  significantly  You.  That 
is  music! 

Perhaps,  especially  if  you  are  a  poor 
word-monger  like  Hugh  Lyddon,  you  may 
be  stirred  to  speech  when  you  open  your 
eyes,  awaking  from  music's  internal  reality 
(as  it  seems)  into  the  shimmering,  chatter- 
ing external  world.  That  is  my  excuse  for 
trying  to  phrase  the  effect  of  La  Brise  du 
Reve  on  me — that  and  my  duty  as  Little 
Historian. 

This  then  is  what  I  heard  and  felt,  what 
time  the  pale  magician  tossed  back  his  yel- 
low hair,  cuddled  his  violin  under  his  chin 
and  began  .  .  . 

An  ascending  roulade  that  rose  fountain- 
like,  sprayed  into  clear,  sunny  drops  that 
fell,  with  a  half-heard,  hinting  minor  into 
black,  sleeping  waters.  I  thought  of  the 
Luxembourg  pond  and  of  Pruina  as  she 
moved,  ages  ago,  in  the  careless,  unforsee- 


218  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

ing  day  before  Strategics  was  begotten, 
"through  the  ecstasy  of  Paris  sunshine." 

Another  tinkling  roulade,  happy  silver 
notes,  but  higher,  higher,  spraying  into 
blown  mist  that  dispersed  through  sighing 
minors  into  a  trembling  diminuendo  .  .  . 

And  then  it  began!  Wail  on  wail  of  slid- 
ing, rising  sixths,  troubling,  calling,  in- 
sistent ;  and  my  soul  ( already  aching  a  little 
from  Strategics)  sobbed  in  answer.  "Come," 
wailed  the  strings,  "come  and  come  and 
come !  Leave  that  hungry,  thirsty  flesh-ma- 
chine that  you  blundered  into  God  knows 
how;  leave  your  rhymes  and  reasons, 
your  babbling  philosophy,  your  fancies  and 
phrases,  and  come  to  me.  Me!  that  blows 
the  vapour,  and  frosts  the  pane,  and  shakes 
the  leafage,  and  images  the  fire  air  of  the 
spirit.  Come!  Come  with  me!" 

Wail  on  wail,  ever  rising,  ever  shriller  and 
more  beautifully  compelling;  and  then  a  dis- 
cordant, rending  crash,  a  pang  of  separation, 
and  my  free  soul  was  afloat. 


LA   BRISE    DU   REVE       219 

The  discord  resolved  (and  with  it  all 
coveting  ardours  of  earth  and  aching  Stra- 
tegics) into  an  uplifting  atmosphere  of  har- 
mony; and  I  moved  drifting  within  it,  bird- 
like.  And  it  blew  against  me,  this  fine  air, 
this  quintessential  music,  tuning  my  soul  (I 
grope  for  the  phrase)  with  soft-fingering 
voices  into  unison  with  its  spirit.  And  at 
last,  when  its  work  of  love  was  done  and  I 
was  quivering  with  every  vibration  without 
me,  aiding  with  my  whole  being  the  univer- 
sal symphony,  I  rose,  up,  up,  on  an  echo  of 
that  first  bubbling  roulade  and  descended, 
struggling,  unwilling,  through  fretful,  sob- 
bing minors,  back  to  earth. 

That  is  my  little  story  of  La  Brise  du 
Reve.  Others,  wiser  than  I,  have  told  it 
otherwise.  Others,  wiser  still,  have  remained 
dumb,  as  all  should  remain,  in  the  presence 
of  the  ineffable. 

My  eyes  opened  (I  was  surprised  to  find 
them  shut)  on  Little  Emotions.  The  Childe's 
head  was  in  his  hands,  elbows  on  the  table. 


220  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Aloys,  always  moved  by  great  music,  raised 
his  hands  and  made  vague,  unmeaning 
gestures.  Betty  was  flagrantly  weeping;  and 
Pruina's  eyes  wandered  from  one  face  to 
another  with  a  certain  golden  mastery. 

Cyril,  the  impassive,  the  ever-practical, 
rose  and  stalked  over  to  the  musicians.  The 
violinist,  in  answer  to  his  question,  tapped 
with  his  bow  the  manuscript  sheet  on  the 
music-stand.  Cyril  stooped,  read  and  re- 
turned. Impassive?  Not  now,  with  those 
wide  eyes,  that  mouth  a-quiver!  He  tried 
to  speak,  our  ready  Cyril,  and  no  words 
came.  Then,  stuttering,  he  pointed  a  shak- 
ing finger  at  Pruina — and  we  understood! 

Understood!  as  only  Little  Ones  can  un- 
derstand; and  we  held  out  our  arms,  all  of 
us,  by  some  dumb,  common  instinct,  toward 
that  pure,  singing  spirit,  that  rare  genius, 
our  Little  Pruina. 

"And  you  like  it  so  much,  so  much,"  said 
she.  "I  am  very  happy." 

Her  simple  words  relaxed  the  tense  emo- 


LA   BRISE    DU    REVE        221 

tions;  and  we  fed  her  solemnly,  as  it  were  a 
sacrament,  with  the  last  bit  of  Peche  car- 
dinale,  and  put  a  royal  chrysanthemum  in 
her  hair,  and  coined  tender  Little  Names 
for  her  and  flamboyant  titles.  For  her  no 
Grand  Croix,  Nobel  prize,  or  Prix  de  Rome 
—below  her  worth  and  work,  all  of  them! 
For  her  a  unique  distinction,  invented  by 
our  hierophant,  the  Grand  Guerdon  of 
Littleonehood ! 

Then  the  magician  and  his  pianist  went 
down  to  Bohemia;  and  presently  we  heard, 
far  away,  faint  echoes  of  those  sliding 
minors  and  wailing  sixths.  As  they  ended, 
Bohemia  spoke — spoke  with  its  generous 
unreserve,  with  clappings  and  howls  and 
eiffelesque  enthusiasms.  The  magician  was 
so  be-kissed,  I  heard  later,  that  he  revealed 
in  self-defense  the  secret  that  the  composi- 
trice  was  en  haut. 

"She  is  here,"  went  up  a  mighty  shout. 
"Let  her  come!" 

At  this  the  Little  Ones  "saved  them- 


222  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

selves,"  hustling  their  genius  away  through 
twisting  passages  and  out  by  the  door  that 
gives  on  the  Rue  du  Depart. 

What  more  of  that  night? 

Little  more — only  the  unsleeping  eyes  of 
Hugh  Lyddon  and  his  Machiavellian  self- 
communings. 

"He  is  a  great  genius,"  said  he,  "and  she 
a  great  genius.  The  game  is  in  my  hands. 
He  and  she.  She  and  he." 

And  so  on,  in  wearying  iteration,  until  he 
ached  himself  into  tossing  slumber. 


XVI 

FROST  WORK 

rpHE  horn  of  Les  Avants  recommences 
its  echoing  insistence;  and  memory 
sees  four  Little  Ones  listening  to  its  calling 
on  the  heights.  She  sees  them  leave  Paris 
early  in  January,  pass  their  leafless  Fon- 
tainebleau,  slide  by  the  spires  of  Dijon,  and 
climb,  amid  the  snow-laden  Christmas  firs 
on  their  slopes,  the  white  valleys  of  the 
Juras.  Then  did  our  Aloys  watch  the  moun- 
tain frost  write  on  the  car  windows  bizarre 
modernities  for  the  Book;  then  did  our 
Pruina  prattle  happily  of  her  girlhood  and 
New  England  winters.  Then  did  the  Childe 
put  off  his  wan  introspections  and  spin 
hyperbolic  fancies;  and  Hugh  Lyddon,  that 
shaper  of  destinies,  eclipsed  his  Machiavelli 

223 


in  his  traveling  bag,  which  he  snapped  to, 
like  the  shears  of  Atropos,  with  a  clash  of 
finality.  For  he  was  content  in  a  grim, 
gnawing,  griping  fashion  of  his  own  with 
the  march  of  strategics.  There  is  a  crepitat- 
ing pleasure  in  playing  a  great  game  even 
when  it  excruciates.  Together  now,  both  of 
his  beloved  puppets,  on  a  stage  befitting 
their  drama;  and  the  subtle  threads  were  in 
his  fingers. 

For  the  Childe's  presence  in  the  snows 
was  the  harvest  of  sown  hintings — strategic 
seeds,  cast  by  Hugh,  harrowed  by  Betty, 
and  warmed  by  the  blond  sunshine  of 
Pruina. 

I  find  now,  looking  backward,  a  vague 
symbolism  in  our  first  sight  of  the  Lake  of 
Geneva.  As  our  train  skirted  the  shore  be- 
tween Lausanne  and  Montreux  the  lake  was 
hidden  in  fog.  On  the  morrow  too,  as  we 
stood  on  the  heights  of  Les  Avants,  all  be- 
low us  was  grey  vapour.  A  veil,  not  to  be 
raised  by  cunningest  strategics,  lay  over  the 


FROST    WORK  225 

beauty  we  had  hoped  to  find.  But  with  the 
next  day  came  a  persuasive  sun.  By  noon 
he  had  coaxed  the  fog  into  transparency; 
and  we  came  into  our  own.  Grammont, 
girdled  by  wisps  of  vapour,  gloomed  across 
the  water;  the  Dent  du  Midi  jagged  white 
against  the  southern  sky;  and  the  peaked 
wings  of  the  lake  boats  flashed  agreeably  in 
the  sunshine. 

"Little  Lake,"  sighed  Pruina— "Little 
Lake." 

She  had  found  the  word.  It  was  ours, 
Lac  Leman,  in  the  very  aloofness  of  its  ap- 
peal. Far  away — the  white  Ideals  of  its 
crisp  peaks ;  far  away — the  invisible  brother- 
hood of  mountain  Aspirations  behind  them. 
And  around  us  and  them  the  flowing  air, 
the  creedless  symbol  of  That  which  all  who 
are  Little  Ones  worship  "in  spirit  and  in 
truth." 

The  reticent  beauty  of  the  cold  heights 
had  also  to  me  a  machinal  interest.  Here 
was  that  chilled  misery  of  an  Infant;  here 


226  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

was  that  genial  sunshine  of  a  Pruina;  here 
they  were  vibrating  electric  together,  charged 
by  this  great  dynamo  of  nature,  in  the  closed 
circuit  of  the  hills.  Something  would  hap- 
pen! These  alpine  currents  (aided  by  fine 
strategics),  what  might  not  be  their  output 
in  fulfillment  and  joy.  The  hills  and  I.  En 
avant!  Hardi,  mes  braves! 

Fortunately  for  my  gigantic  allies  and 
me  (for  life  needs  some  beer  and  skittles), 
there  were  Little  Distractions.  One  could 
luger,  for  example,  which  is  simply  coasting 
translated  into  a  sociaJ  function  for  those  of 
mature  years.  A  sport  invented  for  Little 
Ones,  we  joined  in  it  madly;  so  that  even 
now  I  have  mad  dreams  of  the  vertiginous 
swirl  of  the  sled  round  the  banked  curve  at 
Les  Avants. 

Lugeing  suggests  (if  the  reader  will  for- 
give the  latinism)  a  tibial  digression.  There 
existed  in  the  last  generation  a  stratum  of 
society  of  abnormal  anatomy.  It  had  feet — 
"her  feet  beneath  her  petticoat,  like  little 


FROST    WORK  227 

mice  stole  in  and  out" — so  much  was  patent. 
It  had  knees — proved  by  genuflection,  the 
word  and  the  pose — so  much  was  conceded. 
But  between  the  feet  and  the  knees — 
nothing!  Pink  euphemisms  clothed  it. 
"Priscilla  has  fractured  a  limb,"  perhaps, 
leaving  the  literal  mind  a-quiver  between  a 
broken  cherry  bough  and  a  white  arm  in 
splints.  Or  perchance  it  is  a  "lower  ex- 
tremity," thus  bewitching  the  blushing  hurt 
into  a  mere  pedestrial  ambiguity.  Fancy 
the  Ancient  Mariner  so  bowdlerised:  "Yea, 
slimy  things  did  walk  with  lower  extremities 
upon  a  slimy  sea."  That  were  an  extremity 
indeed ! 

Well,  we  have  changed  all  that;  and  at 
Les  Avants,  where  all  ages  and  both  sexes 
shot,  straddling  bounding  luges,  down  a 
peopled  slope,  this  "nothing  more  than  mat- 
ter" became  a  Little  Merriment. 

It  was  generally  extremely  English,  the 
extremity.  "The  nation  that  marches  on 
those  things,"  said  the  Childe,  indicating  a 


228  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

scudding  General,  "need  fear  no  Germans." 
It  was  titled,  middle-class,  lay  and  cleric.  It 
affected  brown  puttees.  It  belonged  to  a 
cabinet  minister;  even,  it  was  whispered,  to 
a  duchess.  It  assisted  the  poet,  whose  verses 
you  know  so  well,  to  climb  the  slide.  It 
guided,  as  he  rocketed  by  (belly- whoppers, 
if  you  please),  the  course  of  a  muscular 
bishop.  There  were,  thank  the  playful  gods, 
the  feet  of  many  Little  Ones  on  the  moun- 
tains !  So  much  for  the  tibial  digression. 

One  could  also  skii,  vaingloriously,  if  one 
could;  one  could  also  skii,  diffusing  merri- 
ment, if  one  could  not.  I  came  one  morning, 
after  a  strategic  absence  that  I  called  work, 
on  Pruina  and  the  Infant.  He  was  lying  in 
the  snow  with  his  legs  and  the  skiis  tied  in 
an  extraordinary  knot.  She  was  standing 
with  her  back  to  him,  some  twenty  feet  away, 
trying  in  vain  to  turn  secundum  art  em. 

"Hugh,"  said  he,  "will  you  diagnose  this 
knot?" 


FROST    WORK  229 

"It  is,"  I  answered,  "either  Shakespeare's 
'self -figured  knot'  or  a  carrick  bend." 

"Will  you  kindly  undo  it  without  dislo- 
cating my  legs  or  breaking  a  ski." 

"No,  Childe!  So  perfect  a  thing  as  that 
should  be  preserved  inviolate.  You  shall  re- 
main here  and  become  an  icy  petrifaction. 

"Old  ass!" 

"Obloquy  moves  me  not.  Au  revoir!  I 
shall  seek  you  at  nightfall  with  remnants 
from  the  table  d'hote." 

And  I  skiied  away  to  the  top  of  a  little  hill 
whence  I  watched  Pruina  unbuckle  her  skiis 
and  go  to  her  comrade's  rescue. 

Observe,  ye  mountains,  my  master-game 
and  play  yours  as  well!  It  will  not  wail  in 
your  granite  souls  like  the  sliding  minors  of 
La  Brise  du  Reve  .  .  . 

Dear  old  Childe!    Dear  Pruina  I    .    .     . 

While  we  luged  and  skiied,  laughed,  ached 
and  played,  Aloys  read  the  mountain  frost. 
"Fish  skywards!"  with  its  religious  sugges- 
tion, is  of  this  epoch;  so  also  is  that  sweet 


230  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

command,  "Make  thyself  into  a  singing 
blossom." 

These  were  very  well,  but  greater  was  to 
follow.  One  morning  Aloys  (Strategics 
kept  me  much  in  his  calm  company)  handed 
me  a  frost-script. 

"There  is  nothing  like  it,"  he  said,  "in  any 
Bible  of  any  faith  or  in  any  philosophy.  It's 
the  final  word  of  truth." 

"Read  it,"  I  prayed. 

"The  kingliest  word,"  he  read,  "the  king- 
liest  word  in  the  Book  is  this :  May  a  kinglier 
soon  discrown  me." 

Whatever  one  believes  as  to  the  work  of 
the  frost,  this  proves,  I  think,  that  truth  had 
descended  among  the  Little  Ones  and  that 
our  good  Aloys  was  its  prophet. 


XVII 

STRATEGICS 

FT  is  afternoon.  We  have  come  down  by 
the  electric  railway  to  Vevey  and  stroll 
in  the  good  winter  sunshine  under  the  leaf- 
less platanes  along  the  Quai.  The  stone 
parapet  is  warm  to  the  hand ;  the  sun  burns 
on  the  face;  and  the  only  snow  in  sight  is 
cloaking  those  great  allies  that  watch  me 
with  confederate  interest  from  across  the 
lake,  the  alps  of  the  Valais  and  the  hills  of 
Savoy.  May  they  find  me  worthy! 

Destiny  (Le  Destin,  c'est  mot!)  has  de- 
creed that  Aloys  should  walk  with  the 
Childe,  that  I  should  walk  with  Pruina,  and 
that  an  interval,  exquisitely  hesitating  be- 
tween aloofness  and  comradeship,  should 
divide  the  groups.  We  walked,  therefore, 

231 


232  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Pruina  and  I,  in  a  sort  of  transparent 
cloister.  Our  voices  did  not  pass  beyond  its 
walls.  Only  the  hills  bore  witness. 

Day  after  slow  day,  ever  since  the  viper's 
bite  at  Fontainebleau — by  hints,  gestures, 
reticences  innumerable — by  underlining  this 
and  deleting  that — by  study  of  the  poetic 
masters  of  the  emotions — by  grubbing  (me 
miserable!)  through  modernest  psychology 
— I  had  made  Pruina  and  myself  ready  for 
this  moment. 

And  it  had  come. 

"You  are  doing  good  work,"  I  began, 
nodding  at  the  Infant's  back,  "you  and  the 
mountains." 

"My  collaborators,"  she  answered,  look- 
ing up  at  the  Rochers  de  Naye,  white  against 
the  blue,  "have  done  it  all." 

"Not  all,"  I  said.  "They  image  the  cold 
heights ;  you  give  the  sunny  levels.  He  needs 
both,  I  think,  poor  fellow." 

Pity  is  a  degree  to  love,  says  Little  Will. 


STRATEGICS  233 

Strategics,  then,  demands  this  mediate  pas- 
sion in  Pruina. 

"Aspiration  and  sympathy,"  she  said,  as 
if  she  were  translating  my  words. 

"Sympathy,"  I  commented,  "the  word 
rings  rather  false.  It  means  to  suffer  with, 
I  suppose;  and  you  are  not  precisely  a  fel- 
low-victim. You  can't  know  his  suffering 
unless  you  suffer  or  have  suffered  in  the 
same  way.  No;  we  want  some  finer  word." 

"Compassion?"  she  suggested. 

"That's  just  to  passion  with,  or  to  suffer 
with." 

"Ruth?"  said  she. 

"It  is  exact,"  I  admitted,  rather  grudg- 
ingly, "but  the  colour,  the  connotation,  the 
fragrance — " 

"There's  rue  for  you,"  she  quoted;  "and 
here's  some  for  me." 

"I  know;  but  Ophelia  was  mad;  and  a 
true  Little  Word  must  be  romance.  These 
icy  northern  dialects — Brr!" 

"Then  how  will  pity  do?" 


234  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Pity" — I  pretended  to  hesitate — "that  is 
near.  'And  Pity  like  a  naked  new-born  babe' 
-You  have  it — a  most  dainty  diminutive! 
Give  him  that,  Pruina,  and  let  the  hills  do 
the  rest.  You'll  find  it  easy;  'for  pitee 
renneth  sone  in  gentil  herte,'  says  Little 
Geoffrey." 

"Not  always,"  she  said,  not  looking  at  me, 
but  watching  the  gulls  circling  expectantly 
along  the  shore.  "Indeed,  it  is  rather  hard 
for  a  girl  to  think  that  a  strong  man  needs 
pity  for  the  loss  of  another  girl.  Suppose  a 
baby  breaks  a  toy — " 

This  would  not  do  at  all. 

"You  are  right,"  I  broke  in.  "The  man, 
perhaps,  deserves  no  pity  for  the  loss  of  the 
girl  qua  girl;  but  consider!  How  about  the 
symbol,  Little  Pruina;  how  about  the 
mystic  symbol?  He  has  knelt  at  a  shrine, 
year  by  year;  one  day  he  finds  the  image 
shattered — " 

"But  Betty's  not  shattered." 

"Right!    I  stumbled.    He  finds  the  image 


STRATEGICS  235 

gone,  stolen,  vanished;  and  the  nerve  be- 
tween his  yearning  soul  and  the  universal 
love  is  dead.  That  particular  girl  was  the 
organ,  the  eye,  whereby  and  wherethrough 
he  saw  the  infinite.  The  eye  gone,  he  gropes, 
he  suffers,  he  is  a  blind  man  at  the  door  of 
Love's  temple;  he  is  worthy  of  the  alms  of 
pity." 

My  words  rang  hollow.  I  felt  clothed 
with  inadequacy  as  with  a  motley  coat. 

Pruina's  eyes,  tawny  dubieties,  following 
the  gull-swirls,  showed  no  assenting  light. 

"A  broken  toy,"  she  murmured. 

"Take  it  so,"  I  cried,  suddenly  inspired; 
"take  it  so  if  you  will.  Are  we  not  Little 
Ones?  A  broken  toy!  A  poor  broken  toy! 
The  pity  of  it— Oh,  the  pity  of  it,  Pruina!" 

"I  was  wrong" — ah,  the  wet,  brown  light 
in  the  eyes  now! — "Poor  Little  Roland;  I 
am  so  sorry  for  him." 

Victory! — of  a  sort.  What  an  emotional 
process  it  is,  this  victory. 

"Poor  Little  Roland,"  I  echoed;  "but—" 


236  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

This  was  a  strategic  hesitation,  that  the 
designed  transition  of  thought  might  have 
the  initial  emphasis  of  incompleteness. 

"But,"  she  prompted. 

"But,"  I  continued,  "our  duty  does  not 
end  with  pity  for  the  Little  One." 

"What  follows?" 

"This,  admiration  and  reverence  for  the 
Genius.  Roland  Elliot  is  a  very  great 
man!" 

Brown  deeps  of  wonder  were  opened  on 
me. 

"When  you  have  seen  Les  Ailes  Rog- 
nees"  I  said,  "you  will  understand." 

"A  picture?" 

"I  am  not  betraying  a  Little  Confidence," 
said  I;  "and  yet— 

"And  yet" — the  wonder-light  flickered  in- 
to bright  curiosity — "you  are  a  Little  Ex- 
asperation." 

"Perhaps.  Fate  sometimes  forces  us, 
against  our  wills,  into  invidious  reticences." 

"When   someone  becomes   polysyllabic," 


STRATEGICS  287 

she  remarked  dreamily,  "someone  evades 
something." 

This  would  never  do.  It  is  not  strategics 
to  babble  of  the  vagaries  of  Someone. 

"No;  I  am  not  evasive.  I  was  playing  a 
little  on  the  doorstep  of  a  pleasant  subject. 
The  literal  fact  is  that  Roland  has  painted 
a  great  picture." 

"Soul  or  technique?" 

"Both,"  said  I.  "Infinitely  both.  Tell 
me,  what  do  you  call  the  greatest  picture  in 
the  world?" 

"The—" 

"Wait!"  I  cried;  "this  is  an  artistic  crisis. 
The  thing  is  impossible,  but  suppose! — sup- 
pose, Pruina,  that  our  Little  Tastes  do  not 
go  on  all  fours!" 

"Impossible!  There  is  no  choice.  It 
is—" 

"No;  I  prithee,  no!  Approach  it  by 
dainty  steps,  mincing  steps.  Let  us  respect 
this  signal  moment." 

"There  is  a  street,"  said  she,  her  eyes  re- 


238  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

flective  wells  of  reminiscence;  "shall  I  tell 
its  name?" 

"No  names,  an  you  love  me.  There  is  a 
street—" 

"A  broad,  fair  street,  sloping  upwards." 

"It  must  surely  slope  upwards." 

"We  reach  a  gateway  in  a  brown 
wall—" 

"An  old,  brown  wall." 

"A  massive,  brown  gateway,  deeply 
arched;  and  beyond — " 

"That  beyond!" 

"Are  meadows — " 

"And  trees,  Pruina?" 

"And  solemn  trees,  ilexes,  stonepines  and 
cypresses.  And  old  statues  and  temples 
and  fountains.  We  turn  to  the  right  and 
walk  under  the  pines  over  places  worn  bare 
by  children's  feet — " 

"The  playing  feet  of  Little  Ones." 

"And  we  come  to  a  building." 

"Do  we  go  in?" 

"What  else?    We  pay—" 


STRATEGICS  239 

"No;  I  insist  on  paying  for  both.  What 
shall  I  pay,  Pruina?" 

"Two  francs." 

"Not  francs,"  I  cried;  "y°u  torture  me! 
Not  francs." 

"Two  lire  then." 

"Two  lire,  one  for  you  and  one  for  me. 
And  then?" 

"We  go  right  to  it." 

"Looking  at  nothing  else?" 

"There  is  nothing  else  just  then." 

"And  we  find  it,  discover  it  all  over  again, 
and  for  some  blind,  blessed  moments  we 
cannot  see  it,  or  our  fellow-worshipers,  or 
each  other." 

Brown,  wet  light  in  those  dear  eyes  again. 
Ah,  Titian,  mighty  master,  what  a  deathless 
Little  Magic  was  thine! 

"We  are  there,"  she  said;  "and  now  it  is 
your  turn.  Tell  me  about  the  picture,  Little 
Hugh." 

My  word !  I  had  not  foreseen  this.  Yet, 
could  I  but  do  it,  our  masterpiece  might  be 


240  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

cunningly  dovetailed  into  the  strategic 
scheme  of  things. 

"There  are  two  processes  of  art,"  I  began, 
didactically.  "One  is  to  leave  out  what  you 
don't  like.  This  is  a  sort  of  artistic  cult  of 
hate ;  and  its  disciples  go  through  life  hating 
more  and  more,  leaving  out  more  and  more, 
and  end  by  being  great  artists  because  they 
find  so  little  to  love." 

"You  are  a  Little  Exaggeration." 

"Of  course  I  am.  Exaggeration  is  only 
an  awkward  kangaroo  leap  toward  an  eva- 
sive truth.  The  other  process  of  art  is  this — 
to  master  the  whole  sumptuous  vocabulary 
of  nature  and  use  it  to  phrase  your  creed, 
your  faith — I  grope  for  the  word — " 

"Grope  on,  Little  Hugh." 

"Your  religion,  whatever  is  highest  and 
holiest.  Art!  what  is  it?  What  but  the 
equation,  stated  in  hard  symbols,  between 
what  you  think  you  see  and  what  you  know 
you  feel." 

"Wait,"  said  Pruina. 


STRATEGICS  241 

I  saw  her  lips  form  the  words,  one  by  one; 
and  the  happy  things,  in  that  rosy  incarna- 
tion, became  on  a  sudden  beautifully  signifi- 
cant. I  was  obliged  to  remind  Hugh  Lyd- 
don,  strategist,  that  his  special  science  was 
not  created  to  study  rosy  incarnations. 

"Allezl"  she  commanded. 

"I'm  not  sure  that  those  words  mean  any- 
thing," I  said  doubtfully.  "What  do  you 
think?" 

"Let's  hope  for  the  best,"  she  answered. 
"Alias!" 

"Then  we  may  apply  them  to  our  picture. 
We  see  there  the  world  that  Titian  thought 
he  saw,  through  the  aura  of  wealth,  beauty, 
health  and  gentle  culture  in  which  he  lived. 
We  feel  too  the  gracious  calm,  the  opulent 
colour  of  his  sea-dwelling  Venetian  soul. 
Well,  what  did  he  do?  He  used  Selection, 
that  choice  tool  of  the  spirit,  and  Antithesis, 
that  engine  of  the  mind,  and  he  wrought  a 
picture.  A  picture?  No!  it  is  a  great  moral 
scales,  in  which  he  balanced,  one  against  the 


242  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

other,  the  warring  answers  to  the  riddle  of 
life.  And  in  the  fearlessness  of  his  faith,  he 
made  both  as  beautiful  as  he  saw  them,  as  we 
ourselves  see  them.  And  what  do  we  see? 
Two  women  seated  on  the  edge  of  a  carved 
marble  basin.  One,  richly  clothed,  leans  on 
a  closed  vessel,  which  she  half  covers  with 
her  flowing  sleeve  and  her  gloved  hand.  The 
other,  giving  her  young  beauty  to  the  sun- 
light, holds  up  a  censer  whence  rises  a  waver- 
ing fume  of  incense.  What  are  these  women, 
what  do  they  hypostatize?  Are  they  Having 
and  Giving,  Dogma  and  Freedom — " 

"Or,"  Pruina  broke  in,  "a  Grown-up  and 
a  Little  One?" 

"Who  knows?  They  are  themes  in  Titian's 
symphony,  themes  that  he  develops  until 
none  can  miss  their  inner  meaning.  By  the 
one  is  shadow;  by  the  other  light.  Here  a 
broken  hill ;  there  a  pleasant  meadow.  Here, 
on  dark  heights,  a  feudal  castle  hints  of  war 
and  captivity;  there,  on  the  sea  beyond  the 
grove,  a  white  sail  beckons  toward  free  ad- 


STRATEGICS  243 

venture.  Even  the  sombre  lines  of  the  rough 
hillside  and  the  prudish  folds  of  the  dress 
battle  with  the  wan  streakings  of  the  far  sky 
and  the  curves  of  the  young  limbs.  What  is 
in  that  guarded,  covered  vessel? — a  creed? 
a  cloistered  selfishness?  a  frozen  soul?  Who 
knows?  What  is  the  scent  of  that  incense 
that  blows  vanishing  into  space?  Love? 
Life?  Aspiration?  Again,  who  knows  1 
We  are  only  sure  that  it  all  sings  of  the  Here 
and  the  Beyond,  of  the  World  and  Little- 
oneness." 

"What  of  the  Cupid?"  asked  Pruina. 

As  if  it  were  all  the  arrows  in  his  quiver, 
the  name  martyred  my  heart.  Now  courage, 
strategic  Hugh,  and  play  the  man! 

"I  am  glad  you  asked  the  question,"  I 
said  doggedly;  "for  it  brings  us  back  to 
Les  Ailes  Rognees.  The  Childe  has  taken 
up  the  Cupid-theme  where  Titian  left  off. 
Titian  gives  Love  no  voice  in  his  symphony. 
He  sends  him  away,  tells  him  not  to  bother; 
and  poor  Cupid,  his  vocation  gone,  dabbles 


244  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

idly  in  the  pool.  Our  great  Infant  has  re- 
stated the  riddle,  giving  Love  his  separate 
theme ;  and  his  picture,  on  my  Little  Honour, 
is  worthy  to  hang  beside  the  master's  in  the 
Villa  Borghese." 

Jo/  victory  is  mine.  Ate!  but  it  aches,  the 
victory.  I  see  the  admiration  demanded  by 
strategics  in  that  dear,  glowing  face.  Pity 
and  admiration! — the  time  is  ripe,  and  I 
shatter  the  cloister  walls  by  a  shout  to  the 
unconscious  Childe. 

He  came  toward  us. 

"Tell  Little  Pruina,"  I  said,  "about  Les 
Ailes  Rognees." 

"Traitor!"  he  cried. 

"The  Pruina  tempted  me  and  I  did  tell," 
said  I. 

"Adam!"  cried  Pruina. 

"As  a  temporarily  unpopular  person,"  I 
remarked,  "I  shall  join  Little  Aloys  yonder, 
buy  some  petits  pains  and  feed  the  gulls. 
They  also  (also,  if  you  please)  squawk  and 
jeer  at  their  benefactors," 


STRATEGICS  245 

So  saying,  I  left  them  and,  at  a  strategic 
distance,  fed  the  wheeling  gulls  that  seemed, 
so  white  they  flashed  in  the  sunshine,  to  be 
detached  fragments  of  my  snowy  confeder- 
ates, the  alps  of  the  Valais  and  the  hills  of 
Savoy. 


XVIII 

VERACITIES 

Childe  and  I  were  sitting  that  even- 
ing in  the  parlour  of  the  hotel.  It  was 
midnight.  Pruina,  pleading  weariness,  had 
left  us  early.  Aloys  was  busy  with  the  frost. 
Pair  by  pair,  the  putteed  legs  came  in  from 
moonlight  lugeing,  sank  heavily  into  chairs, 
crossed  and  re-crossed  themselves  nervously, 
and  at  last  took  their  blowsed  and  yawning 
owners  up  to  bed.  Finally,  the  episcopal 
gaiters  bade  us  a  sacerdotal  good-night ;  and 
we  were  left  alone. 

"Do  you  remember,"  began  the  Childe,  in 
melancholy  accents. 

"I  do  not,"  I  answered  firmly.  "I  am 
careful  never  to  remember  anything  so  hark- 
from-the-tomb-y  as  your  voice  predicts." 

246 


VERACITIES  247 

"Our  talk  by  the  Fountain  of  the 
Medicis?"  he  continued,  with  a  weary  smile. 

"Vaguely,"  I  answered;  "we  talked  of 
goldfish." 

"Of  love,"  said  he.  "I  remember  nothing 
about  goldfish." 

"Of  goldfish,"  said  I.  "I  remember  nothing 
about  love." 

He  looked  at  me  with  surprise. 

"Are  you  telling  the  truth,  Hugh?" 

"No;  I  was  occupied  by  my  art.  You  must 
have  observed  the  antithetic  balance  of  your 
phrase  and  mine.  Now  Bain  says— 

"Please  be  serious,  old  fellow.  Sometimes 
your  nonsense  is  amusing;  but  just  now  it 
hurts." 

"Forgive  me,  Childe!  Yes;  of  course  I 
remember  every  word  we  spoke.  We  did 
talk  of  love." 

"And  of  Betty." 

"And,"  I  forced  my  lips  to  add,  "of 
Pruina." 


248  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Of  love,  Betty  and  Pruina.  Hugh,  I 
am  very  unhappy!" 

O  frustrate  Strategics,  why  smilest  thou, 
fatuous,  on  thine  own  defeat? 

"The  man,"  I  said  severely,  "that  con- 
ceived and  painted  Les  Ailes  Rognees  has 
no  right  to  the  minor  emotions." 

"Minor  emotions,"  he  sighed  miserably, 
and  then  added  irrelevantly,  "I  wish  I  could 
trust  you  for  a  plain  statement  of  fact." 

"Anything  I  know — "  I  began  urbanely, 
when  he  broke  in  with  the  following  rude 
and  astounding  words. 

"But,"  said  he,  "you  have  become  such 
a  liar." 

Galileo's  "E  pur  si  muove"  must  have  had 
the  same  clang  of  conviction. 

Thus,  O  Strategics,  dost  thou  lead  thy 
martyrs  to  the  crass  stake  of  plain-speaking! 

While  I  was  considering  my  answer,  he 
added  as  an  afterthought. 

"And  such  an  egregious  ass." 

"I  don't  mind  playing  ass  to  your  Ba- 


VERACITIES  249 

laam,"  I  said;  "and  I'd  much  rather  be 
egregious  than  not.  But  I  don't  like  to  be 
called  a  liar.  True!  I  grant  you  that  in 
the  process  of  artistic  selection,  I  may  omit 
notes  of  jarring  colour,  just  as  you  do  when 
you  paint.  Also,  I  may  get  so  drunk  with 
the  intoxication  of  a  certain  mood  as  to  see 
the  thoughts  and  things  embraced  by  that 
mood  doubled,  wavering  and  eiffelesque. 
What  else  did  you  do,  Mr.  Artist,  when  you 
painted  Les  Ailes  Rognees?" 

"That  was  a  matter  of  art,"  he  said;  "and 
what  is  art — " 

"Art,"  I  interjected,  clutching  the  fore- 
lock of  didactic  opportunity,  "is  the  equa- 
tion, stated  in  hard  symbols,  between  what 
you  think  you  see  and  what  you  know  you 
feel.  Now  which,  I  ask  you,  is  the  more 
sacred,  the  more  inviolable  thing — what  you 
know  you  feel  or  what  you  think  you  see — 
the  Mood,  which  is  almost  yourself,  or  the 
Fact,  which  is  almost  illusion?  If  my  mood 
distorts  my  fact,  tant  pis  pour  le  fait,  say  I." 


250  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Then,"  he  said  slowly,  with  a  rather 
Socratic  accent,  "your  lies — " 

"Pardon  me,  old  man,  but  I  have  pled 
guilty  to  no  vice  so  monosyllabic." 

"Your  selective  exercises — " 

"Much  daintier." 

"Only  relate  to  facts." 

"Only  to  facts."  I  assented  carelessly, 
never  thinking  of  logical  consequences. 
These,  says  Huxley,  can  always  take  care  of 
themselves. 

"Then  I  may  trust,"  he  said,  looking  into 
my  face,  "anything  you  tell  me  as  to  your 
mood,  your  feelings?" 

"Absolutely,"  said  I,  letting  him  read  in 
my  eyes  the  truth  at  least  that  springs  from 
good  intentions. 

"Now,"  he  continued,  "let  us  go  back  to 
another  conversation.  I  mean  the  talk  we 
had  after  Betty  was  bitten  by  the  adder.  Do 
you  remember  it?" 

"Petal  by  petal,"  said  I,  tasting  in  retro- 
spect the  bitter-sweet  of  that  hour. 


VERACITIES  251 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?"  he  asked 
suspiciously. 

"Nothing  much,"  I  answered,  "it  was  a 
metaphor — flowers  of  speech,  you  know." 

"Old  ass!  Now,  Hugh,  toward  the  end 
of  that  conversation  you  made  a  statement 
as  to  your  feelings.  Was  that  statement 
true?" 

"Be  a  bit  more  specific,"  said  I,  "lest  there 
be  misunderstandings,  and  you  again  see 
shadows  in  the  white  light  of  my  truth." 

"You  said,"  he  explained,  exhibiting  the 
up-wrinkled  forehead  of  anxious  inquiry, 
"that  you  no  longer  loved  Pruina.  Was  that 
true?" 

I  was  opening  my  mouth  in  reply,  when 
he  raised  an  arrestive  hand. 

"Wait,"  he  commanded.  "I  want  none 
of  your  verbal  subtleties.  Was  that  state- 
ment one  of  fact  or  one  of  feeling?" 

Here  was  a  fine  net  for  a  fluttering  strate- 
gist! 

"Let  me  think,"  I  answered  slowly,  "that 


252  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

statement  (I  remember  it  well)  may  have 
been  a  fact  about  a  feeling.  Or,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  may  have  been  a  feeling  about  a  fact. 
I  really  do  not  know,  as  I  look  backward  in- 
to my  memory,  whether  dear  Little  Pruina 
was  a  glorious  fact,  getting  part  of  her  glow 
and  colour  from  my  mood,  or  whether  she 
was,  for  a  time,  the  very  mood  itself.  But, 
whatever  she  was,  whatever  my  feeling  was, 
I  tell  you  this,  in  all  solemnity,  in  all  truth, 
on  my  Little  Honour — " 

At  this  point  something  happened  in  my 
soul,  something  that  calls  for  a  long  paren- 
thesis. I  search  memory  for  an  image  of 
that  happening,  that  the  reader  may  see  it 
in  some  pictorial  shape;  and  I  find  (saved  by 
that  magpie  of  a  Mnemosyne) — a  broken 
shard  of  coloured  glass!  Such  iridescences 
lie  round  the  feet  of  children  only;  for 
blanched  age  the  paths  are  swept  and — 
acromatic.  If  ever  you  have  been  a  human, 
country  child  (God  pity  you,  otherwise!) 
you  shall  have  found  such  a  fragment.  A 


VERACITIES  253 

jagged  triangle  or  trapezium  it  was,  whereof 
the  watchful  angel  that  had  dropped  it  had 
ground  and  rounded  the  cutting  edges  to  the 
use  of  little  figures.  Found,  there  came  the 
cleaning  of  the  thing,  the  scratching  of  the 
caked  mud  (what  an  educational  angel  it 
is!),  the  rubbing  with  frock  or  knicker- 
bockers, the  breathing  on  the  glass  with  a 
long,  warm,  moist  "Ha-a-a,"  a  final  polish, 
and  then — a  new  earth!  One  eye  shut  tight 
and  the  other  glazed  with  mystery,  you 
gyrate  in  solemn  joy,  looking  out  on  the 
glamoured  landscape.  You  do  not  know  it 
then,  perhaps  you  may  never  know  it;  but 
(what  a  metaphysical  angel  it  is!)  you  are 
illustrating  filmiest  philosophies  and  walk- 
ing, a  tiny  peripatetic,  with  recondite  ab- 
stractions— abstractions  raised,  if  you  please, 
by  Kant  on  Plato's  shoulders,  by  Schopen- 
hauer on  Kant's  shoulders,  to  the  nth  degree 
of  untouchability. 

Thus  you  gyrate  and  stare  for  a  long,  long 
time,  a  whole  minute  perhaps,  until  it  seems 


254  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

as  if  the  world  had  always  been  so  colour- 
bewitched.  Then,  quite  suddenly,  you  grow 
tired  of  the  game,  throw  the  glass  away  and 
find  (what  a  wise  psychologist  of  an  angel 
it  is!)  that  the  world  is  far  prettier  in  its 
everyday  tints. 

This  reminiscence,  you  will  recall,  is  but 
the  foundation  for  a  metaphor,  something  to 
image  an  abnormal  mental  change. 

Consider !  I  began  my  answer  to  Roland's 
question  as  a  strategist :  I  ended  it  as  a  mere 
babbler  of  truth.  For  months,  ever  since 
that  vipered  and  petaled  day  at  Fontaine- 
bleau,  I  had  played  a  part ;  now  the  part  was 
playing  me!  Then  and  since  I  had  ached 
miserably  with  every  seeming  victory  and 
glowed  miserably  with  every  defeat;  now  is 
neither  ache  nor  glow,  nought  but  the  mild 
thrill  of  accurate  self-expression.  Have  I 
capitulated  to  my  own  strategics?  Have  I 
been  moved  by  the  Great  Player  on  some 
long  diagonal  of  the  chess-board  of  fate?  Or 
have  I,  as  when  a  child,  ceased  to  stare 


VERACITIES  255 

through  my  shard  of  rainbow?  Who  can 
say? 

For  the  instant,  as  I  write,  the  coloured 
glass  theory  underlines  itself.  Pruina,  blond 
in  the  blond  sunshine ! — did  I  not  see  her  and 
life  and  my  own  soul  through  that  warm, 
amber  phrase?  Did  I  not  worship  the  halo 
rather  than  the  saint;  the  grail  rather  than 
the  god?  Perhaps — not  a  word  of  convic- 
tion, I  know,  yet — perhaps! 

And  then,  following  hard  on  aching  stra- 
tegics, come  these  austere  whitenesses,  these 
frozen  aspirations,  heights  where  even  the 
warm  life-breath  fogs  into  grey  symbolisms. 
No  blond  sunshine  here,  no  surface  illusion 
of  colour;  and  yet — I  know  it  now  for  the 
first  time — these  alps  are  mine,  my  own 
soul's  home  and  not  Pruina's.  She  is  France, 
the  France  that  treads  the  red  vintage  of 
nature's  beauty,  the  glow,  the  flow,  the  in- 
toxication, into  the  wine  of  art.  And  I,  I 
am  New  England,  witch-burning,  puritan, 
aspiring,  mystic  New  England,  whose  bleak 


256  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

eye  turns  forever  to  the  bleak  soul  within, 
whose  ear,  deaf  to  earthy  music,  listens  pain- 
fully to  the  unechoing  silences  of  God. 

Words! — these  sounding  phrases  mean 
only  this — that  for  some  feverish  months  I 
have  been  telling  and  living  the  truth  with- 
out knowing  it,  that  what  I  called  strategics 
was  an  honest  impulse,  that  my  achings  were 
affectations  and  my  joys  delusions,  and  that 
I  loved  nothing  whatever  save  the  Little 
Ones,  my  art  and  (let  us  tell  all  the  truth) 
myself.  Thus  ends  the  long  parenthesis,  with- 
"Exit  Strategics;  Enter  Truth." 

"On  my  Little  Honour,"  I  repeated, 
rather  dizzily  conscious  of  my  refound 
veracity,  "I  am  not  in  love  with  Pruina." 

He  studied  me  earnestly. 

"For  the  first  time  in  months,"  said  he, 
smiling,  "your  eyes  agree  with  your  tongue. 
You  think  you  are  telling  the  truth." 

"Of  course  I  am  telling  the  truth,"  said  I, 
rather  testily;  "and  I  don't  like  your  this- 


VERACITIES  257 

my-brother-was-lost-and-is-found  fashion  of 
speech  and  your  welcome-O-Prodigal  smile." 

"Forgive  me,  old  chap,"  he  said  humbly, 
"I  mean  no  harm.  God  knows  I  have  nothing 
to  smile  over." 

"The  man  that  conceived  and  painted  Les 
Ailes  Rognees,"  I  began — 

"Hugh,"  he  interrupted  dolefully,  "I  am 
very  unhappy." 

"Why,  Childe  Roland,  why?" 

"Because,"  came  the  astounding  answer, 
"I  am  not  nearly  as  unhappy  as  I  ought  to 
be!" 

"O  last  regret,"  I  quoted,  "regret  can  die. 
— You  eiffelesque  old  donkey,  let  it  die!" 

"But  it  won't  die,"  he  sighed. 

"Then  cherish  it;  make  it  live,"  I  sug- 
gested experimentally. 

"It  won't  quite  live." 

"Then" — but  I  had  exhausted  the  alterna- 
tives ;  a  sentiment  must  surely  be  either  dead 
or  alive. 

"Infant,"  I  recommenced,  "you  are  illog- 


258  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

ical.  You  refuse  to  obey  the' law  of  the  ex- 
cluded middle.  You — " 

"There's  a  sort  of  war  going  on,"  said  he; 
"and  I'm  the  field  of  battle.  There's  an  old 
trend  of  sentiment  on  one  side,  you  know, 
memory  of  happy  days,  loyalty  to  one's 
deepest  emotions,  and  all  that.  And  on  the 
other—" 

"What  is  the  other?"  I  asked;  for  he 
seemed  to  need  the  shog  of  friendly  curiosity. 

"That's  just  what  I  don't  know,"  he  an- 
swered. "It's  all  a  vagueness,  a  sort  of 
warm,  golden  vagueness;  and  I  am  very, 
very  miserable." 

"No;  you're  not,"  I  contradicted.  "A 
warm,  golden  vagueness  doesn't  sound  half 
bad.  If  I  chanced  to  have  a  sentiment  like 
that  I  shouldn't  let  her  make  me  sad." 

"Her?" 

"It  sounds  somewhat  feminine.  No;  I 
should  bask  in  it,  study  it,  beg  it  to  grow 
concrete.  In  short,  I  should  make  it  ex- 
ceedingly welcome,  and  then  await  results." 


VERACITIES  259 

"Then  besides  the  golden  vagueness" — he 
evidently  had  not  attended  to  my  last  homily 
— "there  is  a  bothering  phrase.  You  know 
how  tunes  haunt  one  sometimes.  A  phrase 
— I  feel  like  an  unutterable  ass  to  talk  like 
this — a  phrase.  Never  mind  what  it  is — " 

"I  do  mind.  Make  a  full  confession, 
Infant." 

"Blond  in  the  blond  sunshine,  it  goes,'* 
said  he.  "Utter  rot!  What  the  devil  does 
it  mean?" 

"It  is  probably  the  battle-cry  of  your 
warm,  golden  vagueness,"  I  answered  non- 
chalantly; but,  O  strategics,  how  my  heart 
leaped  for  joy!  "And  a  rather  dainty  bit 
of  word  music  it  is.  Proceed  with  your  other 
symptoms." 

"That  is  all;  and  I  am  a  most  miserable 
devil." 

"Let  us  sum  up  your  troubles,"  I  said 
judicially.  "If  I  have  understood  you  aright, 
a  blond  vagueness  has  insinuated  itself  be- 
tween you  and  the  love  you  used  to  bear 


260  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Betty,  a  love  that  your  loyal  conscience  will 
not  permit  you  to  cherish,  but  which  never- 
theless it  pains  you  to  relinquish  wholly.  You 
are  not  sorrowing  because  you  cannot  marry 
Betty,  but  because  you  cannot  take  sorrow 
itself  to  wife." 

"How  clearly  you  put  it." 

"I  put  it  clearly  because  I  feel  it  emotion- 
ally. You  don't  love  Betty;  but  you  love 
the  idea  of  loving  her,  and  cling  achingly  to 
that  idea." 

"Achingly,"  he  agreed. 

"Achingly.  Well,  we  have  now  diagnosed 
your  trouble.  It  remains  to  dictate  the  cure." 

He  shook  a  doubting  head. 

"I  can  cure  you,"  I  said  firmly,  "if  you 
will  do  just  what  I  say." 

"What  do  you  say?" 

"This;  be  a  strategic  Providence.  Ar- 
range things!  Try,  actively  try,  to  help 
Cyril  and  Betty;  help  them;  get  them 
married — " 

He  moaned  slightly. 


VERACITIES  261 

"Encourage  the  golden  vagueness;  seek 
the  blond  sunshine;  and  you  will  be  cured." 

"How  do  you  know  that  if  I  get  them 
married,"  he  began,  wavering  between  doubt 
and  the  will  to  believe. 

"By  something  very  like  experience,"  I 
said. 

"A  strategic  Providence,"  he  mused. 

"Precisely." 

"I  don't  see  how." 

"The  How  will  happen  along,  if  you 
watch  for  it,"  said  I,  rising  with  a  yawn. 

"Arrange  things?"  he  questioned,  rising 
also. 

"By  fine  strategics.  Good-night,  Roland." 

"By  strategics.    Good-night,  Hugh." 

And  so  we  parted    .    .    . 


THE  WILL 

TN  the  morning  of  the  following  day,  I 
found  the  Childe  alone  in  the  reading- 
room. 

"How  do  you  happen,"  I  asked,  on  seeing 
how  he  was  occupied,  "to  have  such  a  lot  of 
letters." 

"Why,"  he  answered,  "I  quite  forgot  till 
the  other  day  that  such  things  existed.  Then 
I  wrote  my  concierge  to  forward  my  mail. 
Behold  the  result,  some  of  it  four  weeks  old ; 
and  I  want  to  go  skating." 

"His  Lordship  won't  miss  you,"  I  said — 
Roland  had  accidentally  upset  the  bishop 
yesterday — "so  be  as  industrious  as  your  ar- 
tistic nature  will  permit.  I'll  wait  for  you." 

So  I  waited,  reviewing  in  the  light  of  day 

262 


THE    WILL  263 

the  talk  and  thought  of  the  dark  hours.  In 
the  course  of  this  review  I  saw  again  from 
a  new  angle  the  consecrated  phrase,  "Blond 
in  the  blond  sunshine."  Good  Lord!  Who 
can  reckon  after  this  with  the  dynamics  of 
literary  suggestion?  Words  are  life  itself; 
and  nothing  exists  emotionally  until  it  has 
been  adequately  phrased.  Love,  even  love, 
perhaps  is  but  a  lyric  phrase,  uplifted  on 
such  music  as  La  Brise  du  Reve  .  .  . 

It  was  hereabouts  in  my  meditation  that 
the  Childe  began  to  swear,  extemporising 
a  Bach-like  fugue  of  French  oaths  on  a  har- 
monious counterpoint  of  damns.  I  longed 
for  the  presence  of  the  episcopal  gaiters. 

"An  admirable  composition,"  I  said,  after 
listening  awhile,  "but  unenlightening." 

"Cad  Bent!"  he  cried,  throwing  me  a  let- 
ter. "Read  that!" 

"Infant,"  said  I,  "your  eyes  are  scarlet, 
your  face  is  a  royal  purple,  and  the  veins  on 
your  temple  are  about  to  burst.  Control 
your  Little  Emotions." 


264  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Read!"  he  shouted ;  and  I  read  as  follows : 

"DEAR  ELLIOT: — I  sail  for  New  York  tomor- 
row. The  sea  has  its  sharks  and  shoals,  New  York 
its  typhoid  and  Tammany,  even  Paris  its  puritans 
and  pharisees.  My  will,  in  case  heaven  claims  me, 
is  to  be  found  in  my  desk,  the  Louis  Quinze.  To 
make  sure  that  you  will  find  it,  dear  puritan,  and 
profit  thereby,  I  enclose  a  copy. 

"Yours, 

"C.  BENT." 

"There  is  no  date,"  I  said. 

"It  is  post-marked  a  month  ago,"  said 
Roland.  "Read  the  will." 

This  is  what  I  read: 

"In  the  Name  of  God,  Amen: 

"I,  Cadwalader  Bent,  of  New  York,  U.S.A.,  now 
residing  in  Paris,  do  make,  publish  and  declare 
this  to  be  my  last  will  and  testament: 

"I  give  my  collection  of  La  Rochfoucauld  to  the 
Bibliotheque  Mazarine. 

"I  give  to  Cyril  Harley,  student  of  architecture, 
my  natural  son  by  Margaret  Harley,  wife  of 
my  esteemed  first  cousin,  Paul  Harley,  the  sum  of 
One  hundred  dollars  and  my  paternal  benediction. 


THE    WILL  265 

"All  the  rest,  residue  and  remainder  of  my 
estate,  both  real  and  personal,  I  give,  devise  and 
bequeath  to  my  young  friend,  the  gallant  pre- 
server of  my  life,  Roland  Elliot,  artist,  of  Paris, 
whom  I  appoint  as  my  sole  executor." 

That  was  all,  except  for  the  formal  end- 
ing and  the  attestation  clause. 

"Well,  why  don't  you  swear?"  asked 
Bent's  beneficiary,  when  I  had  finished. 

"Anti-climax,"  I  gasped.  "What  does 
this  clause  about  Cyril  mean?" 

"Why,  Bent  was  engaged  to  be  married  to 
Cyril's  mother,  who  was  a  beautiful  Balti- 
morean.  I  thought  Cyril  told  you  the  story 
after  he  had  written  home  for  information 
as  to  Bent.  No?  Well,  she  found  out  what 
he  was  and  gave  him  his  cong£.  Later  she 
married  Paul  Harley,  Cyril's  father;  and 
Bent  vowed  vengeance  on  them  both.  He 
began  by  getting  the  grandfather's  fortune. 
I  don't  know  how;  ancient  claims  or  trusts 
or  legal  deviltries — and  ends  by  trying  to 
smirch  her  reputation." 


266  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

And  the  fugue  recommenced. 

"Does  Bent  seem  real  to  you  now,"  asked 
the  improvisor  savagely,  interrupting  him- 
self ;  "does  he  seem  a  shadow,  a  figment  of 
my  imagination?" 

Fugue  —  with  guttural  variations  into 
German. 

"He  is  fairly  concrete,"  I  admitted,  "but 
rather  too  hellish  for  real  life." 

The  word  "hellish"  started  him  on  a 
scheme  of  eternal  punishment  that  would 
have  pleased  Dante. 

"Fiendish!"  said  I,  when  he  became  silent. 
"Just  think  of  it!  That  infernal  paper  filed 
in  the  Surrogate's  Court,  copied  by  the 
gloating  press,  repeated  in  the  records,  pre- 
served from  mischance,  there  for  all  the 
world  to  read,  lying  its  way  into  men's  eyes 
and  minds.  It  is  devilish,  Infant,  just 
devilish." 

This  theme,  by  way  of  finale,  was  executed 
prestissimo  to  a  breathless  close. 


THE    WILL  267 

"There!"  he  panted.  "That  probably 
saved  me  an  apoplexy.  What  shall  we  do?" 

"Wait  till  Bent  comes  back  and  make  him 
swallow  that  will,"  I  suggested. 

"And  then  kill  him,"  added  the  ungrate- 
ful legatee  ferociously. 

"He  deserves  it,"  I  granted ;  "but  it  is  not 
regarded  as  etiquette.  No;  Bent  shall  live, 
frustrate  and  terrified,  under  our  supervision. 
How  will  that  do?" 

"We'll  supervise  him  with  a  rack  and 
thumbscrew,"  he  decided  grimly. 

"No,"  I  said;  "torture  is  contrary  to  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  which 
though  obsolescent  at  home  is  still  vener- 
ated by  Americans  abroad.  No  rack  for 
Bent." 

While  we  were  playing  with  the  subject, 
he  was  idly  turning  over  his  unopened  mail. 

"A  note  from  old  Cyril,"  he  exclaimed, 
tearing  it  open.  "What  hieroglyphics!  and 
all  in  telegraphese,  as  usual." 

"What  does  he  say?" 


268  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"We  probably  shall  never  know"  —  his 
eyes  wandered  down  the  page  —  "here's  some- 
thing about  sailing." 

"Is  he  sailing?" 

"Lord  knows!  It's  dated  day  before  yes- 
terday. I  can  read  that  much." 

"Then  the  good  fellow  was  extant  on  that 
date.  That's  something." 

He  was  all  wrinkled  attention  and  pinched 
eyelids  for  some  minutes,  and  then  frightened 
me  by  a  stertorous  groan. 

"Hugh,"  he  cried,  "Bent  is  dead." 

It  took  two  agitated  Little  Ones  over  half 
an  hour  to  guess  out  Cyril's  meaning.  This 
is  what  we  made  of  it: 

"Cherbourg,  Feb.  2. 

"Sailing  home  ten  minutes.  Bent  a  claque.  A 
lawyer's  letter.  No  will.  II  y  a  gras.  Shall 
claim  galette.  Marry  April.  Love, 


Which  may  be  translated  that  Bent  hav- 
ing died  intestate,  his  lawyer  announced  to 


THE    WILL  269 

Cyril  that  he  had  fallen  heir  to  a  considerable 
estate,  which  he  was  going  home  to  claim. 

I  laid  a  hand  on  Roland's  shoulder. 

"Didn't  I  predict  last  night  that  the  How 
would  happen  along?" 

"The  How,"  he  cried,  springing  up. 
"That  will!  Paris!  That  damned  will!"— 
he  dashed  into  the  office  of  the  hotel — "My 
bill!  A  timetable!  A  carriage!  My  valise!" 

And  he  rushed  upstairs. 

The  polite  clerk  raised  questioning  eye- 
brows and  looked  at  me. 

"No,"  I  answered  in  excellent  French, 
"Monsieur  is  not  mad.  Monsieur  is  only 
emotioned.  What  is  the  next  train  to 
Paris?" 

"Monsieur  may  make  his  trunks  and  his 
adieux,  dejeuner.,  smoke  his  cigarette  and 
take  the  great  express  from  Milan  to  Paris, 
where  he  will  arrive  at  22.55." 

As  the  suave  clerk  predicted,  so  it  suavely 
befell.  At  five  minutes  to  eleven  that  even- 
ing, the  Childe  and  I  were  back  in  Paris, 


270  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

though  my  memory  of  our  arrival  is  of  the 
vaguest. 

The  Childe  will  explain  why. 


XX 

BURGLARY 

T  AM  Roland  Elliot,  artist-painter,  as  we 
say  here. 

My  friend  Hugh  Lyddon  has  asked  me  to 
calendar  (the  word  is  his)  certain  Little 
Happenings. 

Might  I  read  what  he  had  already  written? 

I  might  not. 

Would  he  give  a  coup  de  pouce  to  what  I 
should  write? 

He  would  not. 

Could  he  suggest  a  model  that  I  might 
imitate? 

He  could.  The  Odyssey! 

And  that  was  all  I  could  get.  He  obstin- 
ated  himself,  as  we  say  here,  to  help  me.  I 

271 


shall  get  jolly  well  even  with  him  for  this! 
As  follows: 

Hail,  goddess,  grey-eyed  daughter  of 
cloud-gathering  Zeus,  and  thou  Saint  Dis- 
mas  (eyes  and  parentage  unknown),  patron 
saint  of  thieves ! 

Assist  me,  both! 

With  my  rose-pink  tongue  (is  that 
Homeric,  Master  Hugh?)  I  can  make  shift 
to  speak  winged  words;  but  with  my  sable 
pen  I  burble  blitheringly.  Help  me,  Pallas! 

With  my  flame-hued  brush  I  can  bedaub 
the  shining  canvas;  but  with  the  beamy 
jimmy  I  am  all  unskilled.  Help  me,  Dismas! 

I  sing  the  fleece-white  heights  and  the 
parting  hand-clasps  of  the  golden-eyed 
Pruina  and  the  grey-browed  Aloys.  And 
she  grew  rosy-red  and  white  again  to  mark 
our  sweating  haste,  then  glowed  dawn-pure. 
I  am  a  painter,  I;  and  colour,  that  highest 
gift  of  the  high  gods,  is  mine  to  see.  And 
as  I  see  it,  so  it  is  and  not  otherwise. 

Hugh  Lyddon  too  was  there,  the  god-like 


BURGLARY  273 

poet,  eagle-beaked,  nut-brown,  Olympian. 
And  as  he  stood  speaking  winged  farewells, 
of  a  verity,  not  since  the  days  of  great  Odys- 
seus has  there  lived  a  nobler  man.  And  as  I 
see  him,  so  he  is,  and  not  otherwise. 

I  sing  the  towered  Gare  de  Lyon  and  a 
Parisian  night  of  wind-blown  lamps  and 
wheeling  stars.  The  snake-like  train  clanked 
in ;  the  curved-backed  porters  came ;  the  folk- 
thronged  ticket-gates  are  passed;  and  lo,  our 
Paris!  Then  did  the  Olympian,  bulking 
huge,  part  the  surging  throng  as  a  ship  with 
crooked  keel  the  yeasty  waves.  We  mount 
a  panting  chariot,  pass  the  light-flashing 
Seine,  and  reach  the  dark  portal  of  his 
heaven-scaling  home.  As  the  wolf  mounts 
Ida's  craggy  heights,  so  we  the  five  score  and 
seven  steps  to  his  skiey  chamber.  We  seize 
the  beamy  jimmy,  and — and — and — 

And!  ' 

There  is  something  wrong!  Pallas,  the 
grey-eyed,  balks  at  the  jimmy  and  refuses 
to  add  epic  dignity  to  crime.  Dismas,  who 


274.  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

did  well  by  us  on  that  dire  night,  seems 
ignorant  of  the  rudiments  of  rhetoric. 

Left  helpless,  therefore,  on  classic  heights, 
I  must  come  down.  I  am  not  (pray  forgive 
me!)  at  home  with  Homer. 

Getting  down  is  the  rub ;  to  cease  from  the 
Bard  and  become  the  Childe ! 

Let  me  consider     .     .     . 

We  painters  have  a  trick  whereby  we 
make  our  pictures  "hold  together."  We 
select  a  cloud,  it  may  be  pink,  grey,  lavender, 
or  what  you  will;  and  we  mix  a  lot  of  that 
colour  on  our  palette.  Some  of  us  call  this 
"soup."  Well,  by  adding  more  or  less  of 
that  soup  to  all  the  other  colours  we  give 
an  effect  of  unity  to  our  picture. 

Why,  there  are  fellows  that  can  paint  a 
pig  looking  at  a  sunset  so  that  both  pig  and 
sky  are  equally  divine,  equally  lost  in  the 
glory  of  the  light.  And  it  is  just  "soup" — 
and  genius ! 

Now,  writers  ought  to  have,  perhaps  they 
do  have,  some  such  trick;  so  that  they  could 


BURGLARY  275 

combine  any  facts,  sublime  and  grotesque, 
pathetic  and  humorous,  and  yet  give  the 
same  general  colour  to  their  work.  Some 
repeated  twists  of  language,  for  example,  or 
some  pet  adjectives,  might  make  incongrui- 
ties (pigs  and  sunsets)  hold  together.  I 
offer  the  idea,  with  artistic  generosity,  to 
Master  Hugh,  and  shall  proceed  during  the 
remainder  of  this  chapter  to  illustrate  my 
meaning.  As  "soup,"  for  example,  I  shall 
here  and  there  use  some  Homeric  adjective; 
Hugh  shall  often  be  the  "god-like  poet" 
(which  will  exasperate  him) ;  and  the  jimmy 
of  L'Ombre-qui-passe  shall  continue  to  be 
the  beamy  jimmy. 

I  think  that  I  am  pretty  well  down  from 
my  epic  flight  by  now,  and  may  continue 
my  story. 

I  pocketed  the  beamy  jimmy — a  sectional 
tool  which  unscrewed  into  three  pieces — and 
the  god-like  poet  donned  a  huge  Latin 
Quarter  cloak,  a  slouch  hat  and  a  great  black 
beard,  the  relic  of  a  dramatic  Nursery.  We 


276  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

hesitated  when  we  saw  standing  on  the 
mantel  the  mysterious  Bottle  of  L'Ombre- 
qui-passe. 

"We  might  try  it  on  Bent's  concierge," 
said  Hugh,  his  eyes  sparkling  with  romantic 
anticipation. 

"We  might  not,"  I  answered;  "we  will 
stick  tight  to  the  plan  we've  made.  It's 
quite  risky  enough  as  it  is." 

Every  detail  of  our  crime,  I  may  note, 
had  been  worked  out  during  the  journey. 

Then  we  legged  it! — legged  it  down  stairs, 
across  the  river,  and  to  the  cab-stand  over 
against  the  Madeleine. 

There  we  hired  a  sapin.  The  driver 
(surely  the  gods  were  with  us!)  was  far  gone 
in  drink. 

We  drove  up  the  Boulevard  Malesherbes, 
passed  Bent's  apartment,  and  left  the  cab 
in  a  side  street  named  after  Fortuny,  a 
painter  like  myself.  His  colour-sense — but 
I  must  (though  it  is  mighty  hard)  stick  to 
my  tale  of  felony. 


BURGLARY  277 

I  left  my  shoes  in  the  cab. 

We  walked  to  Bent's  door. 

Where  the  god-like  poet  rang  the  clang- 
ing bell! 

"Childe  Roland  to  the  dark  tower  came," 
he  whispered. 

Now  a  French  apartment,  gentle  reader, 
is  guarded  day  and  night  by  a  Cerberus  of  a 
concierge.  He  sleeps  in  a  kennel  near  the 
street  door;  and,  when  your  ringing  has  at 
last  awakened  him,  he  pulls  a  cord  (cordon) 
which  springs  the  latch.  When  you  enter 
he  eyes  you  from  his  restless  bed  through  a 
little  unglazed  window,  wh.'ch  commands  (in 
Bent's  apartment)  only  your  head  and 
shoulders. 

I  knew  that  window;  that  was  our  advan- 
tage. 

But  Cerberus  knew  me ;  that  was  the  rub. 

Hugh  rings ;  and  on  the  seventh  clanging 
the  latch  clicks. 

We  enter     .     .     . 

But  we  enter  as  one!    I  hold  fast  by  the 


278  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Olympian  waist;  my  head  is  under  the 
Olympian  cloak;  my  legs  (viewless  to  Cer- 
berus) keep  lock-step  with  the  Olympian 
staggers. 

For  the  god-like  poet  is  drunk.    Very. 

He  reels,  we  reel,  to  the  little  window, 
which  the  great  hat,  tremendous  beard,  and 
mighty  shoulders  covered  completely. 

"Bon  soir,  magnificient  Pierre,"  he  said, 
in  the  drunkenest  French  I  ever  heard,  "O 
superb,  vigilant  and  remarkable  Pierre,  bon 
soir!" 

"I'm  not  Pierre,"  growled  Cerberus. 
"You're  in  the  wrong  house.  Search  else- 
where, pochard.  Get  along." 

Under  cover  of  the  Olympian  wails,  I 
slipped  from  under  the  cloak  and  stole  to 
the  landing  of  the  stairway. 

"Thou  art  not  Pierre?"  rose  the  tearful 
voice.  "Thou  art  not  that  man,  so  loved,  so 
honoured,  so  extraordinary?  And  I" — the 
voice  moved  toward  the  door — "am  not  chez 
moi.  I  am  drunk?  O  the  suspicion  unjust! 


BURGLARY  279 

And  I  am  banished  with  curses  loud" — this 
was  quite  true — "into  the  night  profound. 
Hclas!  Helas!" 

And  the  street  door  clashed  to     ... 

I  had  to  wait  on  that  landing  till  the  con- 
cierge snored. 

I  waited  for  aeons. 

When  at  last  he  began,  he  was  amazing. 
Cerberus,  all  three  heads  at  once,  could  have 
done  no  better. 

Then,  stocking-footed,  I  mounted. 

My  spine!  I  never  knew  where  it  lived 
before.  It  crinkled.  Through  its  whole 
length,  it  crinkled. 

Also,  there  was  goose-flesh.    Universally. 

I  reached  Bent's  door,  second  floor,  front, 
chilled  through. 

I  screwed  the  beamy  jimmy  together, 
sweating  generously. 

It  was  slippery  with  sweat  when  I 
jammed  it  into  the  crack  of  Bent's  door. 

Then,   as   I   applied  pressure,   my  fear 


280  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

passed.  I  wonder  if  professionals  feel  that 
way? 

More  pressure     .     .     . 

Brave  little  jimmy!  There  is  a  crack,  a 
splintering,  and  the  door  is  open. 

I  listen.    Cerberus  snores  below. 

I  slip  in,  close  the  door  and  light  a  match. 

The  air  is  dead.  It  smells  of  velvet  cur- 
tains, morocco,  old  cigars  and  malignant 
thoughts. 

I  am  not  afraid  of  Bent  or  his  damned 
old  ghost  either. 

I  draw  a  curtain  aside  and  open  a  window. 
The  god-like  poet,  watching  below,  looks 
up  and  nods.  Jove-like. 

I  close  the  curtain  and  light  a  candle. 

One  small  flame  makes  many  shadows  .  .  . 

Bent  is  dead  ("a  claque"  wrote  Cyril) 
and  has  gone  to  his  own  place.  The 
shadows  are  merely  effects  of  chiaroscuro. 
No*  painter  is  afraid  of  mere  effects  of 
chiaroscuro. 

To  work,  Roland  Elliot! 


BURGLARY  281 

The  desk — I  have  often  admired  it — is  a 
superb  Louis  Quinze. 

It  is  locked. 

More  work — light  labour  this  time — for 
the  beamy  jimmy. 

I  pull  open  the  drawers     .     .     . 

Here  it  is! — a  long  blue  envelope,  sealed 
with  red  wax,  addressed  to  me. 

I  tear  it  open — the  Will ! 

Pinned  to  one  corner  is  a  slip  of  paper. 
"Ah,  Elliot,"  it  reads,  "I  knew  on  whom 
to  reckon !" 

Did  you  know,  Cad  Bent?  I  only  hope 
you  are  watching  and  know  what  a  silly 
fool  you  were.  That  will  be  damnation 
enough ! 

I  compare  the  will  with  the  copy  he  sent 
me.  Correct ! 

I  take  a  Sevres  bowl — a  beauty — to  the 
fireplace  and  burn  therein  both  will  and 
copy. 

Bent — fool! — are  you  watching? 


282  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

I  crumple  the  ashes ;  I  make  them  as  dust 
with  my  fingers. 

Behold  the  ashes,  fool! 

I  take  the  bowl  to  the  window,  blow  out 
the  candle,  draw  the  curtain  and  look  out. 

The  Olympian  greets  me,  god-like. 

I  invert  the  bowl — are  you  watching,  fool  ? 
—and  the  ashes  of  villainy  blow  off  into 
night. 

My  Little  Chore  is  done! 

I  close  the  window  and  the  curtain,  light 
a  match,  find,  unscrew  and  pocket  the  beamy 
jimmy. 

Then,  after  making  the  door  fast  with  a 
splinter  of  wood,  I  steal  down  stairs  to  the 
landing  and  wait. 

Now,  it  is  quite  as  hard  to  get  out  of  an 
appartement  as  to  get  in.  One  can  no  more 
open  the  door  from  the  inside  than  from 
the  outside.  Cerberus,  in  either  case,  must 
pull  the  sacred  cord. 

The  lawful  outgoer  tramps  downstairs, 


BURGLARY  283 

shouts  "Cordon,  s'il  vous  plait/'  and  is  al- 
lowed to  pass. 

I  am  not  a  lawful  outgoer. 

Item,  my  legs,  now  that  safety  is  near, 
are  trembling  violently. 

Steady,  Roland  Elliot! 

An  old  verse  comes  into  my  mind :  "The 
Lord  shall  preserve  thy  going  out  and  thy 
coming  in." 

I  hope  so,  indeed! 

Would  that  be  compounding  a  felony? 

I  wish  Hugh  would  ring    .     .     . 

He  does,  clang  on  clang.    Drunkenly. 

The  latch  clicks. 

He  reels  in. 

"I  am  a  lost  man,"  he  whimpers.  "I  search 
everywhere;  I  draw  a  thousand  bells;  I 
awaken  all  the  world.  Concierges  innumer- 
able have  cursed  me.  A  moi,  magnificient 
Pierre! — Harken,  while  I  sing  to  thee  the 
horrors  inexorable  of  the  night  profound." 

And  he  sang,  quavering,  "Au  clair  de  la 


284  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

lune,  mon  ami  Pierrot,31  until  the  song  was 
lost  in  the  roars  of  Cerberus. 

By  that  time  we  were  both  outside  the 
door,  which  we  pulled  to  and  then  walked 
quietly  away.  At  the  corner  of  the  Rue 
Fortuny  that  emotional  old  Hugh  flung  his 
great  arm  around  my  shoulders. 

"Well  done,  you!"  said  he.  "By  God,  it 
was  eiffelesque!" 

And  wiped  his  eyes,  the  sentimental 
Olympian!  .  .  . 

Our  driver  had  got  into  his  cab  and  was 
sleeping.  Stertorously. 

No  shaking  could  arouse  him. 

"Give  me  his  hat,"  said  the  god-like  Im- 
perturbable. "I'll  drive." 

He  drove  through  Les  Ternes,  passed  the 
Arc  de  1'Etoile,  followed  the  Champs 
Elysees  and  the  Avenue  d'Antin  to  the 
Pont  des  Invalides. 

Here,  the  innocent  aids  to  our  crime,  the 
beard  and  the  beamy  jimmy,  were  thrown 
into  the  Seine.  Will  the  latter  reappear  as 


BURGLARY  285 

a  Gallo-Roman  bronze  at  the  astonished 
Musee  Carnavalet? 

Thence  Hugh,  the  Olympian  charioteer, 
followed  the  Quai  d'Orsay-and  the  Boule- 
vard St.  Germain  to  the  Rue  du  Bac.  At 
this  point,  where  the  monument  to  Chappe 
holds  out  its  telegraphic  arms,  our  cab  was 
hit  by  a  taxi- auto  and  overturned. 

Some  time  passed  before  I  was  released 
by  two  agents  from  under  the  sleeping  bulk 
of  the  fat  cocker.  The  old  peine  forte  et 
dure  must  have  been  something  like  it;  flnd 
when  I  was  stood  on  my  pins  I  felt  a  bit 
dizzy  and  uncertain. 

"All  the  world  drunk?"  asked  an  agent. 

As  that  seemed  an  unfelonious  theory,  I 
stammered  an  assent. 

"Anglais?" 

Patriotism  called  for  no  denial;  so  I  was 
silent. 

Then  I  saw  Hugh,  my  senses  came  back, 
and  I  managed  to  stagger  to  the  sidewalk 
where  they  had  placed  him. 


286  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

He  lay  on  his  back,  unconscious,  hardly 
breathing. 

"His  address?"  asked  the  agent. 

I  just  managed  to  give  it  before  I 
fainted  .  .  . 

Some  bad  weeks  followed. 

Hugh  had  pitched  on  his  head ;  and  there 
was  fever,  delirium  and  anxious  weighings 
of  the  chances  of  life. 

His  superb  physique  pulled  him  through. 

Our  executive  Betty  organized  us  into  a 
corps  of  nurses;  and  we  had  a  grand  Little 
Fight  with  death. 

I  said  that  there  was  delirium. 

There  was! 

And  it  had  consequences — Our  Hugh 
talked  .  .  . 

One  day,  when  Betty  and  I  were  watch- 
ing him,  he  told  the  whole  story  of  Bent's 
will  and  the  burglary.  He  is  naturally 
fluent;  but  on  this  theme  he  was  really  elo- 
quent. Had  Betty  not  been  present,  I 
should  have  enjoyed  it;  but  as  it  was — 


BURGLARY  287 

diable!  She  wept  bitterly  and  most  unpro 
fessionally  because  we  had  been  so  good  to 
her  Cyril ;  and  I  had  a  blamed  uncomfortable 
time  of  it.  Hugh,  at  that  moment,  was  the 
lucky  dog. 

It  was  he,  though,  that  rescued  me  at  last. 
Just  when  Betty  was  sobbing  hardest  on 
my  shoulder  and  saying  her  f oolishest  things, 
Hugh  began  to  laugh.  Betty  stopped  sob- 
bing, and  I  stopped  protesting,  and  we 
listened. 

"Strategics,"  said  Hugh. 

And  laughed. 

An  Olympian  laugh! 

Then  "Strategics"  again;  and  laughed. 

And  so  on,  alternating,  ad  infinitum. 

I  think,  what  with  his  idiotic  "strategics" 
and  his  laughter,  that  Hugh  had,  on  the 
whole,  rather  a  pleasant  delirium.  Humour, 
and  the  habit  of  never  being  afraid  of  any- 
thing, help  one  through  the  dark  places  of 
life. 

About  two  days  before  he  (as  the  saying 


288  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

is)  came  to  himself,  however,  there  was  a 
change.  "Strategics"  ceased,  and  with  it, 
laughter. 

And  Hugh  began  to  sing!  The  exclama- 
tion-point belongs  there;  for  Hugh  cannot 
sing.  Moreover  he  was,  temporarily,  nearly 
stone  deaf.  Indeed,  I  have  heard  him  argue 
that  his  intense  love  of  music  is  his  purest 
passion,  in  that  music  does  not  return  his 
affection.  However  that  may  be,  his  fevered 
flights  of  song  were  excruciating. 

And  La  Brise  du  Reve,  too! 

He  would  hum  the  three  opening  bars — 
that  at  least  was  his  intention — then  stop 
and  smile  contentedly.  Then  repeat  the 
effort  with  an  added  bar,  and  smile  beatific- 
ally.  And  so  on,  ever  mastering  (as  he 
thought)  a  new  bar,  ever  growing  divinely 
happier. 

And  he  was  divinely  happy.  I,  Roland 
Elliot,  painter,  know  the  face  of  man ;  and  as 
I  see  it  so  it  is  and  not  otherwise.  He  was 
divinely  happy. 


BURGLARY  289 

Thus,  with  thanks  to  the  grey-eyed  god- 
dess, to  Saint  Dismas,  good  at  need,  and  all 
those  truly  gentle  readers  who  carp  not  at 
an  unskilled  pen — thus  endeth  Roland  Elliot. 


XXI. 

SUB  SILENTIO 

T  SEEK  in  vain  for  the  informing  phrase; 
language  is  one  vast  inadequacy.  With 
the  words  of  swordsmen  and  ploughmen  we 
must  needs  envisage  the  meshed  tenuities  of 
the  soul.  Oh,  for  a  new  Pentecost;  the 
rushing,  mighty  wind ;  the  cloven  tongues  of 
utterance ! 

I  have  such  things  to  say     . 

Delirium  —  a  ploughman's  word!  How 
it  roots  in  earth! — de,  meaning  "from,"  and 
lira,  meaning  "furrow."  The  wit  has  strayed 
from  the  furrow — that  is  delirium,  a  sorry, 
clod-scented  image  of  the  mystic  retirement 
of  the  soul  into  haunted  subjectivities. 

What  can  the  man  of  visions,  the  youth  of 

290 


SUB    SILENTIO  291 

dreams,  do  with  such  tools?  His  stuttering 
best?— So  be  it. 

The  furrow     .     .     . 

When  I  came  back  into  the  furrow,  when 
the  foolish  partition  between  the  Me  and  the 
Not  Me  rebuilded  itself,  I  became  a  Little 
Interrogation. 

My  room? — perhaps.  There  was  the 
"Suonatore,"  Bellini's  Little  One;  the  tapes- 
try copied  from  that  of  Bayeux;  the  blue 
pennon  with  the  Y;  the  masks  and  foils. 
There  on  the  mantel  was  the  Florentine 
lady ;  the  matches  and  cigarettes  and  an  un- 
familiar group  of  medicine  bottles  at  one 
end;  and  at  the  other,  meticulously  segre- 
gated, the  lonely  Bottle  of  L'Ombre-qui- 
passe.  It  carried  conviction,  the  Bottle — I 
was  in  my  own  room. 

But  why?  Why  does  Aloys,  smiling 
gravely,  lean  against  the  mantel  and  watch 
me?  Why  does  Roland— "Holloa,  Infant!" 
— move  wordless  lips  and  watch  me?  Why 
does  Betty  — "Holloa,  Bettine!"  — in  a 


292  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

nurse's  dress  and  cap,  wipe  her  blue  eyes  and 
watch  me?  A  nurse — have  I  been  ill? 

My  hands  (be  scientific,  Hugh!)  will  an- 
swer that  question.  The  left  (for  the  other 
seems  paralysed)  is  white  and  thin.  It 
would  make  but  sorry  work  with  an  oar.  It 
could  not  "rough-house  poor  old  Harvard" 
now.  Argal  (ah,  that  good  Shakespeare!), 
I  have  been  ill. 

The  right  hand  (science,  Hugh!)  will  not 
stir.  Why  ?  Shall  I  ask  those  fatuous  mutes 
that  smile  and  watch  me,  those  Little  Dumb- 
nesses? I  shall. 

"Why?"  I  ask,  rolling  my  eyes  to  each  in 
turn.  "Why?" 

They  move  their  smiling  lips,  pantomimic. 
Hamlet  comes  into  my  mind:  "That  are 
but  mutes  and  audience  to  this  act."  They 
must  deem  it  amusing,  I  suppose.  Not  so 
I.  "Oh,  reform  it  altogether,"  says  Hamlet. 
Change  it! — a  mutation  of  mutism,  I  pray 
you.  There  is  a  quirk  of  wit  in  that,  if  one 
could  phrase  it.  I  can't;  wit  and  hand  are 


SUB    SILENTIO  293 

alike — what  is  the  word  ? — debile,  extenuate, 
sapless. 

My  hand — science,  Hugh  Lyddon! — If  I 
should  roll  my  head  to  the  right?  This  must 
be  pondered;  for  the  head  is  ponderous.  I 
shall  ask  the  mutes. 

"If,"  I  say;  and  they  smile,  gesture,  and 
move  their  exasperating  lips.  "Mutate,  ye 
mutes;"  is  what  I  wish  to  say;  but  articula- 
tion shies. 

They  nod;  that  (as  the  dear  French  say) 
is  already  something,  is  already  great-thing. 
I  shall,  hours  hence,  rotate  my  poll  to  right- 
ward.  Poll — the  finical  wordlet!  "All 
flaxen  was  his  poll" — That  poor  Ophelia! — 
But  my  poll  is  sable — "It  was,  as  I  have 
seen  it  in  his  life,  a  sable,  silvered."  Not 
silvered,  mine,  unless  from  the  snows  of  Les 
Avants.  How  is  it,  white  left  hand?  Is  my 
poll  a  Dent  de  Jaman,  snowy-crowned? 
The  chill  (so  whispers  searching  science) 
makes  me  fear  it  ... 

It  is  not  snow;  cloth  rather.     Cold  it  is 


294  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

and  of  a  humidity!  A  turban,  forsooth — 
"an  you  be  not  turned  Turk,  there's  no  more 
sailing  by  the  star."  "Base  Phrygian  Turk," 
turbaned  with  congelation.  And  cold  to  the 
poll  (so  argues  science)  spells  fever.  "After 
life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well." 

But  I  have  slept  ill,  I  think,  babbling, 
laughing,  singing,  groping,  "following  dark- 
ness like  a  dream."  Shakespeare! — how  he 
comes,  that  Little  Will,  as  the  guerdon  of 
much  weeping — 

Aimerais-tu  les  fleurs,  les  pres  et  la  verdure, 

Les  sonnets  de  Petrarque  et  le  chant  des  oiseaux, 

Michel-Ange  et  les  arts,  Shakespeare  et  la  nature, 
Si  tu  n'y  retrouvais  quelques  anciens  sanglots? 

A  few  old  sobs,  pardieu!  and  then — Pe- 
trarch, Michael- Angelo  and  Shakespeare; 
flowers,  fields  and  the  song  of  birds.  Any- 
thing more? — 

Something  more,  I  think.  What  is  it? 
I  would  fain  ask  ye  an  I  could,  ye  uncom- 
municating  mouthers!  Aloys  Guex-Beny, 
you  at  least,  grey-haired  and  gaunt,  perfect 


SUB    SILENTIO  295 

lover  of  the  viewless  dead,  should  know. 
What  is  it,  Aloys?  My  eyes  to  yours;  your 
eyes  to  mine — so!  What  is  it,  grey-one? 

You  point,  smiling,  with  a  slow  grand 
gesture.  To  my  right,  dear  Aloys?  So  be 
it — my  turbaned  poll  shall  rotate  to  right- 
ward,  an  it  may. 

It  is  done.  The  world  must  turn  far 
faciler  or  it  had  stopped  langsyne. 

My  hand  at  last;  but  hidden  all  in  sunny 
tangles  and  trembling  warmth. 

Pruina?    Pruina?     .     .     . 

Is  this  the  thing  I  lack,  this  most  desirable 
sunlight?  Wait,  Hugh;  be  scientific  still. 
Wait! 

Pruina?    Pruina?     .     .     . 

"Blond  in  the  blond  sunshine" — is  it  that? 
There  is  a  struggle  in  my  soul,  a  wrenching 
.  .  .  I  am  near,  near  .  .  . 

Pruina?    Pruina?     .     .     . 

"Blond  in  the  blond  sunshine."  Ha!  that 
was  Roland's  phrase,  not  mine. 

Pruina?    Pruina? 


296  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

She  lifts  her  golden  face,  tear-stained  and 
glowing  .  .  . 

No,  dear  God,  it  was  Roland's  phrase,  not 
mine,  not  mine. 

"Roland!"  I  call.    "Roland!" 

He  comes  and  stands  beside  the  kneeling 
Pruina. 

His  lips  move.  Good  lack,  another 
mouther!  But  I  understand;  how  well  I 
understand  .  .  . 

A  few  old  sobs,  pardieu!  and  then — Pe- 
trarch, Michael- Angelo  and  Shakespeare; 
flowers,  fields  and  the  song  of  birds.  Any- 
thing more? 

Ay — Strategics ! 

How  well  I  understand.  I  look  at  him. 
I  look  at  her.  Strategics ! 

"Is  it  all  right,  you  two?"    I  whisper. 

He  nods,  radiant. 

She  nods,  rose-red. 

Strength,  their  strength,  flowed  rioting 
into  my  heart.  With  that  shaking  right 


SUB    SILENTIO  297 

hand  I  found  hers,  found  his,  and  put  them 
together. 

"God  bless  you  both,"  said  I  and  looked 
at  the  others  joyfully. 

Delight  touched  their  faces  like  sunshine; 
their  rapid  lips  were  voluble  with  unsound- 
ing  words ;  Betty  clapped  glad,  silent  hands ; 
and  Aloys,  in  a  mighty  gesture  like  a  bene- 
diction, swept  from  the  mantel  the  Bottle  of 
L'Ombre-qui-passe. 

It  made  no  sound  when  it  fell     .     .     . 

Fifteen  seconds,  it  could  not  have  been 
longer,  sufficed  for  what  followed. 

I  saw  Aloys  reel,  clutch  at  the  chimney- 
piece,  and  fall  full  length  like  a  forest  tree. 

The  Infant  started  with  a  rush,  no  doubt 
to  open  the  window,  pitched  forward  and 
was  caught  by  the  arm  of  my  reading  chair, 
over  which  he  hung  limply,  face  downward, 
like  a  long,  black  bolster. 

Betty  sank  in  a  huddled  heap,  wavered, 
rolled  over  and  became  a  crumpled  bunch 
of  blue. 


298  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

Pruina  slipped  to  the  floor,  still  clutching 
my  hand,  put  her  golden  face  against  it  and 
fell  asleep  .  .  . 

What  is  happening? — 

Ages  ago! — There  was  a  pale  magician 
then,  who  tossed  back  yellow  hair,  cuddled 
his  violin  under  his  chin  and  played  on  the 
stretched  strings  of  my  heart. 

How  they  ached  afterward,  until  now, 
Pruina!  Pruina! 

And  is  he  playing  still,  playing  eternally, 
the  pale  magician?  Who  but  he  could  play 
that  air  upon  my  quivering  soul  .  .  . 

An  ascending  roulade  that  rises  fountain- 
like,  sprays  into  clear,  sunny  drops  that  fall, 
with  a  half-heard,  hinting  minor,  into  black, 
voiceless  waters. 

Your  music,  Pruina  mia. 

Music,  dear  God?  Ah,  no ;  it  is  not  music. 
It  is  I. 

It  is  I  myself,  the  very  soul  of  me,  that 
leaps  in  fancy  sunward,  plays  in  the  large 


SUB    SILENTIO  299 

air,  sinks  sobbing  back  again  into  this  sleep- 
ing flesh  .  .  . 

Ages  ago! — There  was  a  pale  magician 
then,  who  tossed  back  yellow  hair,  cuddled 
his  violin  under  his  chin  and  played  on  the 
trembling  strings  of  my  soul. 

How  they  agonized  afterward,  until  now, 
Pruina!  Pruina! 

And  is  he  playing  still,  playing  down  the 
ecstatic  centuries,  the  pale  magician  ?  Sure- 
ly, none  but  he  has  mastery  of  the  tortured 
chords  of  the  soul. 

That  air,  dear  God! — that  o'ermastering 
air!  .  .  . 

Another  tinkling  roulade,  happy  silver 
notes,  but  higher,  higher,  spraying  into 
blown  mist  that  disperses  through  sighing 
minors  into  a  trembling  diminuendo. 

Your  music,  dear  Pruina! 

Music  ?  No,  thou  Wonder ;  it  is  not  music. 
It  is  I. 

It  is  I  myself,  the  purest  soul  of  me,  that 
breaks,  ecstatic  silver,  in  the  high  airs  of 


300  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

the  Spirit;  I  myself  that  blows,  a  vaporous 
mist,  out  into  trembling  expectancies,  into 
infinite  aspirations . . . 

Ages  ago ! — There  was  a  mighty  magician 
then,  who  tossed  back  lambent  hair,  clutched 
the  great  earth  in  his  hands,  and  played  on 
the  blond  chopds  of  the  sunshine,  played  the 
Call  of  the  Spirit. 

Then,  I  did  not  know  the  name  of  the  air 
he  played.  Now,  I  know  .  .  . 

"Come,"  wail  the  sliding  sixths,  "come 
and  come  and  come!  Leave  that  hungry, 
thirsty  flesh-machine  you  blundered  into 
God  knows  how;  leave  your  rhymes  and  rea- 
sons, your  babbling  philosophy,  your  fancies 
and  phrases;  leave  all  but  the  love  that 
taught  you  how  to  hear  my  call;  and  come 
to  me!  Me! — the  Ghost  that  quickens  the 
flesh,  the  Thought  that  kneads  the  clay,  the 
Love  wherein  all  lives  and  thoughts  and 
loves  are  One.  Come  to  me!" 

Your  music,  my  love,  soul  of  my  soul, 
Pruina ! 


SUB    SILENTIO  801 

Music? — No;  it  is  We,  beyond  all  utter- 
ance, Ourself ! 

It  is  We  that  answer,  wail  on  yearning 
wail,  to  that  spirit  call.  It  is  We  that  rise, 
with  a  discordant,  rending  cry,  from  our 
sleeping  clay  .  .  . 

Pruina!  Pruina!     .     .     . 

One  and  twain,  twain  and  one,  will-waf  ced 
through  the  blond  chords  of  the  sunshine. . . 

Thy  sunshine,  far  Orient  of  Love  .  .  . 
that  brightens,  vista  by  vista,  up  to  the  Un- 
changing Light  .  .  .  that  fades  through 
glimmering  twilights  back  to  the  wan  Paris- 
ian day  .  .  .  that  glows  itself  into  that 
frail  right  hand  of  mine,  hidden  all  in  sunny 
tangles  and  trembling  warmth. 


POSTLUDE 

.  .  .  Days,  weeks,  months  after  (what 
does  Time  matter?  that  striding  greybeard  is 
no  Little  One),  there  came  an  instant  when 
I  made  an  end  of  reading  the  foregoing 
chronicle  to  Pruina,  laid  down  my  manu- 
script and  looked  anxiously  at  that  golden 
but  inexorable  critic. 

"That's  all,"  said  I. 

She  went  to  the  piano  (she  loves  a  parable, 
that  Pruina!),  struck  a  chord  and  looked  a 
masterful  question  to  me-ward. 

"The  tonic,"  I  answered.  Pruina  is 
teaching  me  harmony. 

Another  chord — 

"The  dominant-seventh,"  I  said  proudly; 
"and  to  reward  me  move  your  head  into  that 
pleasant  slant  of  sunlight." 

302 


POSTLUDE  803 

Another — 

"The  tonic  again — and  the  sub-dominant; 
and  the  dominant-seventh  once  more— 

Pruina  paused. 

"Which  will  surely  be  followed,  my  dear 
Pruina,  by  the  tonic.  Why? — Because  you 
are  by  way  of  creating  an  Authentic  Ca- 
dence!"— this  in  tones  of  not  unnatural  vain- 
glory. 

But  that  Pruina  wrecked  my  prophecy. 
She  played  the  dominant-seventh  again  and 
again,  clashing  it  madly,  until  my  exasper- 
ated ears  ached  for  the  closing  chord. 

"Resolve  it!"  I  cried,  technical  even  in  my 
agony.  "Resolve  it,  an  you  love  me!" 

She  left  the  piano,  left  that  unhappy  chord 
shrieking  for  resolution,  came  over  to  me, 
and  tapped  my  manuscript  with  an  allegor- 
ical finger. 

"Another  dominant-seventh?"  I  asked 
humbly. 

She  nodded  and  put  her  arm  round  my 
neck. 


304  NOTHING  ELSE  MATTERS 

"Suppose,"  said  she. 

"Continue  to  suppose,"  said  I;  "it  is  a 
most  sweet  hypothesis." 

"Suppose  that  there  had  been  no  vision, 
no  Bottle  of  L'Ombre-qui-passe?" 

"In  that  case,"  I  answered,  sliding  into  the 
jesting-earnest  of  my  aching  days,  "Stra- 
tegics, which  had  already  conquered  my 
fancy  for  one  standing  so  beautifully  blond 
in  the  blond  sunshine — " 

"You  should  have  heard  what  you  said 
in  your  fever,"  cooed  Pruina  happily. 

" — and  the  Infant's  fancy  for  Betty, 
would  have  surely  wrought  its  perfected 
work;  and  (although  immortal  fame  and 
Pruina  together  are  beyond  the  deserts  of 
any  mortal  man)  you  and  he  would  at 
last—" 

"You  really  should  have  heard  yourself," 
murmured  that  irrelevant  Pruina. 

"My  reason  for  this  belief  is  written  in  the 
Book,"  I  went  on,  all  earnest  now.  "From 
the  love  that  wants,,  it  says,  to  the  love  that 


POSTLUDE  805 

loves — rise,  tJiou  Lover!  Now,  the  love  that 
wants  is  of  the  earth,  earthly,  and  may  be 
moulded  and  shattered  by  sublime  Stra- 
tegics; but  the  love  that  loves  is  of  the 
ghost,  ghostly,  and  has  no  master  save  the 
Eternal.  Such  is  our  love,  my  own — a  love 
that  has  seen  the  other  side  of  the  rainbow" — 
she  nestled  close  in  my  arms — "that  has 
touched  in  united  vision  the  white  fringes  of 
the  Ineffable  Presence;  that  throws  over  all 
the  passions  and  joys  and  fears  of  life  a 
luminous  shadow  of  the  Shekinah.  This 
earth  shall  pass,  the  blond  sunshine  shall 
fade,  but  love  like  ours,  shining  in  the  grail 
of  divine  experience,  shall  glow  unchanging 
for  evermore." 

"The  Authentic  Cadence,"  said  Pruina; 
and  she  left  my  arms,  went  to  the  piano, 
and  resolved  that  waiting  seventh  into  the 
closing  chord. 

I  followed.  The  piano,  just  then,  seemed 
very  far  away. 


"Dear,"  I  said,  when  she  was  in  my  arms 
again,  "why  did  this  blessedness  come  to  us, 
out  of  all  the  world?" 

"Because  we  are  Little  Ones,"  said 
Pruina;  "nothing  else  really  matters." 


THE  END. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

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UN  HI 


989 


I.  F.  McLeA*. 

(48  MX  BROADWAY,  LOS  ANGELES 


A     000  127  056    o 


